Tamerlan had been dead for nearly two years, and Jahar had been in federal prison almost as long. Like some other inmates awaiting trial on terrorism charges, he was subjected to “special administrative measures,” or SAMs, which create an extreme sort of solitary confinement. Inmates are usually banned from attempting communication with other prisoners. The exact restrictions imposed in specific cases are hard to ascertain, because SAMs subjects are forbidden to talk about them, but in Jahar’s case, most of the SAMs provisions became part of the court record. Once the restrictions were imposed, in August 2013, he could communicate by phone only with his lawyers and immediate family members, and his interlocutors were banned from recording the conversations and from releasing any part of them to anyone else. All calls with family were to be monitored, recorded, and analyzed by the FBI for evidence of any attempt to pass messages. Aside from the legal team, only immediate family members could visit, and they were required to speak English to Jahar, while an FBI agent listened in. The visits with family could involve no physical contact: Jahar and the visitors used telephone receivers to talk through a glass partition. Correspondence was also allowed only with family members, only in English, and only at the rate of one three-page letter a week, addressed to a single recipient. Taken together, these restrictions meant that only Bella and Ailina could visit Jahar and that he could speak on the phone only to them and to Zubeidat.
The restrictions were imposed by order of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who wrote: “I find that there is a substantial risk that his communications or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury to persons.” Holder’s memo gave two examples of the inmate’s harmful contacts with the outside world: first, Jahar had asked Azamat, Dias, and Robel to hide evidence; second, Zubeidat had released portions of a May 24, 2013, phone call with him—the first time he had been able to speak on the phone after recovering from injuries to his vocal cords—“in an apparent attempt to engender sympathy for Tsarnaev.” The memo added: “Tsarnaev has also gained widespread notoriety while incarcerated, as evidenced by his receipt of nearly one thousand pieces of unsolicited mail.” By the time this document appeared, the government had collected all its evidence in the case against Dias, Azamat, and Robel, and it did not actually allege that Jahar had asked his friends to hide evidence. As for the portions of conversation publicized by Zubeidat, in which her son assured her that he was well, these “have little bearing on whether Tsarnaev will attempt to spread concrete actionable messages,” argued the ACLU of Massachusetts in an amicus brief in support of the defense’s attempt to have SAMs lifted. The court refused to lift SAMs—and even to allow the ACLU to file the brief.
AFTER THE INITIAL FLOOD of public attention—the news stories; then a Rolling Stone cover that drew fire because to some, the picture of Jahar, with tousled hair and the hint of a beard, made him look like a rock star, though the story itself could hardly be described as sympathetic or even sensitive; then the massive Boston Globe investigation—there was about a year of near silence. At least in part this was attributable to SAMs, which effectively restricted not only Jahar’s but also the family’s and the legal team’s ability to communicate publicly.
After his arrest, Jahar appeared in public once, at his arraignment on July 10, 2013. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit, and he had what appeared to be a scab on his face—too fresh to stem from the wounds sustained almost three months earlier. He seemed to smirk. Or, some people thought, he might have been grimacing as a result of nerve damage caused by gunshot wounds.
The seventy-four-page indictment listed thirty counts, including “use of a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death,” “bombing of a place of public use resulting in death,” “malicious destruction of property resulting in personal injury and death,” and a number of conspiracy and possession-and-use-of-a-firearm charges. Seventeen of the counts carried the potential maximum sentence of death.
It was a mob scene outside the courtroom that day. Only twenty journalists were allowed inside, followed by thirty-five victims and their companions, some wearing leg braces, some using crutches, many holding hands and looking scared. Twenty members of the public entered next, most of them Jahar groupies and conspiracy theorists. When an additional five journalists were allowed in, the rest of the press attempted to rush the courtroom. “Whoa, whoa!” somebody shouted. “Someone’s going to get hurt!” Bella and Ailina, one of them carrying a baby, took seats at the front of the courtroom. A nurse in a white coat sat in the back. The courtroom became very, very quiet.
When Jahar was led in, one of the sisters began to cry loudly. Jahar’s lawyers, on his behalf, waived the reading of the indictment, and the prosecutor listed the charges briefly, grouped by the maximum penalty each carried: death, life imprisonment, twenty-five years, twenty years, and less. The defendant repeated the words “Not guilty” seven times. Inexplicably, he spoke with a heavy Russian accent. In twenty minutes, the hearing was over, and Bella and Ailina cried audibly as their brother was led out of the courtroom.
Jahar had a sterling legal team: Miriam Conrad, the public defender for the district that includes Massachusetts; several people from her office, one of whom spoke Russian; Judy Clarke, a famous lawyer for hopeless cases who had succeeded in helping Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) and several others avoid the death penalty; and David Bruck, another death penalty heavy hitter. Before the arraignment, Clarke and William Fick, the Russian-speaking public defender, had traveled to Dagestan to meet with Anzor and Zubeidat for the first time. It did not go well. The lawyers could not promise that they could prevent a sentence of death, and this not only scared and disappointed the parents but also made them deeply suspicious. It did not help that the lawyers were being paid out of public funds—as the parents perceived it, by the very same government that was seeking to have Dzhokhar executed.
Kheda Saratova, a Chechen human rights activist who had been trying to help the Tsarnaevs in the weeks after the bombing and who was present during conversations with the lawyers, fumed to me a few days later: “If it happens, with this capital punishment, the parents will die for sure. And the U.S. will get so many new enemies that that terrorist attack will certainly not be the last one. There will be people who will want to avenge Dzhokhar.” This was not usual human-rights-activist talk, but this human rights activist, most of whose international contacts were in Europe, was having trouble wrapping her mind around the idea of a civilized country that still used the death penalty. Even in Russia no one had been executed by the state in two decades. And America wanted to execute this kid?