About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 2020)
TODAYS TOP HEADLINES The Times, Gainesville, Georgia | gainesvilletimes.com Weekend Edition - August 1-2, 2020 3A Court overturns death sentence of marathon bomber BY ALANNA DURKIN RICHER Associated Press A federal appeals court Friday threw out Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s death sentence in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, saying the judge who oversaw the case did not adequately screen jurors for potential biases. A three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a new penalty-phase trial on whether the 27-year-old Tsarnaev should be executed for the attack that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others. “But make no mistake: Dzhokhar will spend his remaining days locked up in prison, with the only matter remaining being whether he will die by execution,” Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson wrote in the ruling, more than six months after arguments were heard in the case. An attorney for Tsarnaev said they are grateful for the court’s “straightforward and fair decision: if the government wishes to put someone to death, it must make its case to a fairly selected jury that is provided all relevant information.” “It is now up to the government to determine whether to put the victims and Boston through a second trial, or to allow closure to this terrible tragedy by permitting a sentence of life without the possibility of release,” David Patton said in an email. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston said they were reviewing the opinion and had no imme diate comment. Prosecutors could ask the full appeals court to hear the case or go straight to the U.S. Supreme Court. The mother of Krystle Campbell, the 29-year-old killed in the attack, expressed outrage at the court’s decision. “I just don’t understand it,” Patricia Campbell told The Boston Globe. “It’s just terrible that he’s allowed to live his life. It’s unfair. He didn’t wake up one morning and decide to do what he did. He planned it out. He did a vicious, ugly thing.” Former Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority officer Die Donohue, who was severely injured in a gun- fight with the brothers, said the ruling was not surprising to him. “And in any case, he won’t be getting out and hasn’t been able to harm anyone since he was captured,” he tweeted. Tsarnaev’s lawyers acknowledged at the beginning of his trial that he and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsar naev, set off the two bombs at the marathon finish line. But they argued that Dzhokar Tsarnaev is less culpable than his brother, who they said was the mastermind behind the attack. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a gunbattle with police a few days after the April 15, 2013, bombing. Dzhokar Tsarnaev is now behind bars at a high-security supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. Tsarnaev was convicted on 30 charges, including con spiracy and use of a weapon of mass destruction. The 1st Circuit upheld all but a few of the convictions. Prosecutors told jurors that the men carried out the attack to punish the United States for its wars in Muslim countries. In the boat where Tsarnaev was found hiding, he had scrawled a confession that referred to the wars and wrote, among other things, “Stop killing our innocent people and we will stop.” Tsarnaev’s attorneys identified a slew of issues with his trial, but said in a brief filed with the court that the “first fundamental error” was the judge’s refusal to move the case out of Boston. They also pointed to social media posts from two jurors suggesting they harbored strong opinions even before the 2015 trial started. One juror had said in Twitter posts that that she was “locked down” with her family during the manhunt and retweeted another post calling Tsarnaev a “piece of gar bage,” but later told the court she had not commented on the case or been asked to shelter in place, the defense said. On the day of Tsarnaev’s sentencing, the juror changed her Facebook profile picture to an image that said “BOSTON STRONG,” a rallying cry used in the wake of the bombing, the attorneys said. Tsarnaev’s lawyers pushed several times to move the trial out of the city where the bombs exploded, argu ing the intense media scrutiny and number of people touched by the attack in Boston would taint the jury pool. But U.S. District Judge George O’Toole refused, saying he believed a fair and impartial jury could be found in the city. The 1st Circuit said the “pervasive” media coverage featuring “bone-chilling still shots and videos” of the bombing and dayslong manhunt required the judge to run a jury selection process “sufficient to identify preju dice.” But O’Toole fell short, the judges found. The judges said O’Toole deemed jurors who had already formed the opinion that Tsarnaev was guilty qualified “because they answered ‘yes’ to the question whether they could decide this high-profile case based on the evidence.” Yet he didn’t sufficiently dig into what jurors had read or heard about the case, it said. “By not having the jurors identify what it was they already thought they knew about the case, the judge made it too difficult for himself and the parties to deter mine both the nature of any taint (e.g., whether the juror knew something prejudicial not to be conceded at trial) and the possible remedies for the taint,” Thompson wrote. All three judges agreed that the death sentence should be tossed. In a concurring opinion, Judge Juan Torru- ella wrote that the case should never have been tried in Boston. Tsarnaev Fauci: Virus vaccine likely available in ’21 Agencies carrying out plan to deliver 300M doses KEVIN DIETSCH I Associated Press Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, adjusts his face mask Friday, July 31, during a hearing by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis . BY RICARDO AL0NS0-ZALDIVAR AND MATTHEW PERR0NE Associated Press WASHINGTON - Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday that he remains confident that a coronavirus vaccine will be ready by early next year, telling lawmakers that a quarter-million Americans already have volunteered to take part in clinical trials. But if the future looks encouraging, public health alarms are still going off in the present. Officials testifying with Fauci at a contentious House hearing acknowledged that the U.S. remains unable to deliver all COVID-19 test results within two or three days, and they jointly pleaded with Ameri cans to comply with basic precautions such as wear ing masks, avoiding crowds, and washing their hands frequently. Those simple steps can deliver “the same bang for the buck as if we just shut the entire economy down,” said a frustrated Dr. Robert Red- field, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Pre vention, adding that he has studies to back that up. Looking ahead, Fauci said he’s “cautiously optimistic that we will have a vaccine by the end of this year and as we go into 2021.1 don’t think it’s dreaming... I believe it’s a reality (and) will be shown to be reality.” As the govern ment’s top infectious disease expert, Fauci heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Under White House orders, federal health agen cies and the Defense Depart ment are carrying out a plan dubbed Operation Warp Speed to deliver 300 million vaccine doses on a com pressed timeline. That will happen only after the Food and Drug Administration determines that one or more vaccines are safe and effec tive. Several candidates are being tested. Don’t look for a mass nationwide vaccination right away, Fauci told lawmak ers. There will be a priority list based on recommenda tions from scientific advis ers. Topping the list could be critical workers, such as as medical personnel, or vulnerable groups of people such as older adults with other underlying health problems. “But ultimately, within a reasonable period of time, the plans now allow for any American who needs a vac cine to get it within the year 2021,” Fauci said. Fauci, Redfield, and Department of Health and Human Services “testing czar” Admiral Brett Giroir testified at a moment when early progress against the coronavirus seems to have been frittered away. High numbers of new cases cloud the nation’s path. The three officials appeared before a special House panel inves tigating the government’s pandemic response, itself sharply divided along party lines. Nearly 4.5 million Ameri cans have been infected with COVID-19, and more than 150,000 have died. In recent weeks the virus has rebounded in the South and West, and now upticks are being seen in the Midwest. Testing bottlenecks remain a major issue. Asked if it’s possible to deliver coronavirus test results to patients within 48 to 72 hours, Giroir acknowl edged “it is not a possible benchmark we can achieve today given the demand and supply.” But rapid, widespread test ing is critical to containing the pandemic. It makes it easier for public health work ers to trace the contacts of an infected person. Delayed test results only allow more peo ple to get infected. Giroir said a two- to three- day turnaround “is abso lutely a benchmark we can achieve moving forward.” While hospitals can gen erally deliver in-house test results within 24 hours, large commercial labs that do about half the testing for the country take longer, particu larly if there’s a surge in new cases. The latest government data shows about 75% of test results are coming back within 5 days, but the remainder are taking longer, Giroir told lawmakers. The bitter politics sur rounding the U.S. response to the coronavirus was evident at the hearing by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. As the health officials were testifying, President Donald Trump in a tweet repeated a false claim that high numbers of U.S. cases are due to extensive testing. Committee Chairman James Clyburn, D-S.C., tried to enlist Fauci to rebut the president. And Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio tried to press Fauci into saying that demonstra tions against police violence toward Black Americans spread the virus and should be curbed. Fauci didn’t bite. “You make all kinds of recommendations,” Jordan said, taking aim at Fauci. “You made comments on dating, baseball, and every thing you can imagine... I’m just asking should we try to limit the protesting?” Fauci said it’s not his role to opine on curbing political protests. But Jordan shot back, noting that church ser vices have been shut down due to virus precautions, and implying that Fauci has a double standard on two First Amendment rights, reli gious liberty and freedom of expression. “I’m not favoring any body over anybody,” Fauci answered. “And I don’t judge one crowd versus another crowd. When you’re in a crowd, particularly if you’re not wearing a mask, that induces the spread. ” Some Trump supporters have urged the president to sack Fauci, and the presi dent’s tweet raised the stakes. During the hearing Cly burn had displayed a chart showing rising cases in the U.S. juxtaposed with lower levels across Europe. That caught the president’s eye. Trump tweeted: “Some body please tell Congress man Clyburn, who doesn’t have a clue, that the chart he put up indicating more CASES for the U.S. than Europe, is because we do MUCH MORE testing than any other country in the World.” ASSISTEflUlVINGI HAVE OPTIONS'Af/ASHTONl SENIOR LIVING NOW OPEN! Independent Living Cottages with Assistance OFFERS DUPLEX ONE AND TWO-BEDROOM APARTMENTS WITH ALL THE AMENITIES OF ASSISTED LIVING If you are searching for Senior Living services in the Gainesville area, look no further! 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