United States v. Tsarnaev (20-443)

argument 20-443

United States v. Tsarnaev

Supreme Court of the United States 1h 34m 8 speakers 8 chapters transcribed 6 days ago official recording ↗

▲ 0

Transcript

jump: chapters · speakers · find in transcript

Transcript

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What is the Supreme Court hearing in United States v. Tsarnaev?

John G. Roberts 0:00

We will hear argument first this morning in case twenty four forty three. Tsarnayev versus uh United States versus Tsarnayev. Mr. Fagan?

Paul D. Clement 0:10

Thank you, Mr Chief Justice, and may it please the court. After watching video of respondent by himself personally placing a shrapnel bomb behind a group of children at the Boston Marathon, the jury in this case returned a nuanced verdict unanimously recommending capital punishment for that specific, deliberate act. The Court of Appeals should have let that verdict stand. Instead, it unearthed a previously unmentioned supervisory rule to invalidate a careful and lengthy jury selection process that a prior panel had praised. That process reasonably favoured individualized four deer over focusing every prospective juror on pretrial publicity through wrote content questioning that would have been unhelpful.

Paul D. Clement 1:01

The Court of Appeals then again usurped the district court's discretion by insisting that the jury had to hear unreliable hearsay accusations against respondents' brother by a dead man with a powerful motive to lie. We'll never know how or why three drug dealers were killed in Waltham in twenty eleven, and none of respondents' evolving theories justifies inserting that separate crime into the penalty phase proceedings for respondents' own individual participation in the twenty thirteen marathon bombing. And even if the Court of Appeals had identified a misstep in one of the hundreds of judgment calls that this complex trial required, any error here was harmless. The experienced district judge impaneled an impartial jury which heard overwhelming evidence about respondents' own actions and motivations.

Paul D. Clement 2:00

and rendered a sound judgment against a motivated terrorist who willingly maimed and murdered innocents, including an eight year old boy, in furtherance of jihad. One of the things that we're doing.

Clarence Thomas 2:17

One question before you get too deep into your argument. Uh what tests should we use? Uh the the the First Circuit said that it was exercising its supervisory authority. Um what tests would should we use to uh uh review that exercise of authority or to limit that authority?

Paul D. Clement 2:38

Well I think there are two uh separate questions there, Justice Thomas, w uh that the court would need to consider and deciding either one of them in our favor. Um or deciding that the application of the rule was harmless error um would result in a judgment in the government's favor here. But the first question reviewing the supervisory rule is whether the Court of Appeals had the power to enact the rule at all, and the second is whether this court, exercising its own supervisory power, would find that rule reasonable. As to the first question, I think the fundamental problem with this rule is that it divests district courts of discretion that this court has repeatedly insisted that they have over jury selection.

Paul D. Clement 3:21

If you look at, for example, page four twenty four of the court's decision in MU Min against Virginia, the court emphasizes that not only in constitutional review, but also in exercising supervisory power over the federal courts it has given district courts wide discretion over jury selection because they're there and they can see the jurors as they're individually questioned and are familiar also familiar with local conditions. A as to the the second inquiry, I think the main point here would be that although such questions can be helpful in some cases, they're not invariably helpful and the district court had sound reasons for thinking that they would be unhelpful here. I'd also note that uh on the third point I made, Justice Thomas, that the Court of Appeals in devising this rule clearly uh has a prejudice inquiry built into it.

Paul D. Clement 4:17

That's clear from page sixty A of the petition appendix. That's consistent with the one supervisory rule that this court has made in this context in uh adopted by a plurality the court in Rosalis Lopez. It's why the Court of Appeals left the guilt verdict in place here and I think the same analysis ought to apply uh to the penalty phase verdict.