The Justice Department declined to bow to pressure from four angry, bitter, and vain members of Congress and has charged the suspect in last week's Boston bombings in federal court. According to a DOJ release, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was formally charged in his hospital room today with using a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property resulting in death. The government claims that Tsarnaev killed three people and injured more than 200. Massachusetts has outlawed the death penalty, but these federal charges will allow prosecutors to seek it.
Senators John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, Lindsay Graham, and Rep. Peter King demanded on Saturday that Tsarnaev be charged in military commissions as an "enemy combatant"—a proposal that many people agreed was a terrible, unnecessary idea (here's why).
White House press spokesman Jay Carney confirmed that Tsarnaev will be afforded all of his rights as a U.S. citizen. “We will prosecute this terrorist through our civilian system of justice. Under U.S. law, United States citizens cannot be tried in military commissions," Carney said, adding that “we have used the federal court system to convict and incarcerate hundreds of terrorists.”
Tsarnaev is likely to face state charges related to the murder of an MIT police officer and the shooting injury of a Boston Police Department officer.
Rep. Peter King, who has presided over "Muslim radicalization hearings" in the past, is doubling down on his distrust of the Muslim community. Capital New York summarizes King's comments made in the Sunday political television echo chamber:
"Listen, the threat is coming from within the Muslim community in these cases," King said on Sunday. "In New York, that's why Commissioner Kelly has 1,000 police officers out in the community. Unfortunately, he gets smeared by The New York Times and the Associated Press. But the fact is we've stopped 16 plots in New York because we know that Al Qaeda is shifting its tactics."
You can read the entire complaint against Tsarnaev below:
