According to a USA Today report, federal prosecutors in the capital murder and terrorism case of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have requested a court judge to force the latter's defense team to disclose whether they will present any mental health issues during the defendant's November trial. The prosecutors have set a May 7 deadline for the lone survivor of the Tsarnaev brothers.
This could have been a response to Tsarnaev's attorneys' court filings in late March, who argued that their client has been under psychological domination of his late older brother, Tamerlan, when he purportedly committed the crime with him. The elder Tamerlan was killed during a broad police manhunt for the two in April last year.
The federal public defender's office in the state, although mum about the case when asked for a comment by USA Today on Monday, was found to have pointed to a prosecution evidence according to a March 28 filing, which supported an argument that the elder Tsarnaev supplied his younger brother the motivation, planning and ideology of the bombings
USA Today said that the bombings caused the deaths of three people and injured over 250 people. The bombs were reportedly homemade out of pressure cookers, police said. They also added that the pair later fatally shot a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer while attempting to steal the latter's gun.
At the moment, Tsarnaev is being held at the Federal Medical Center Devens, which is located in Ayer, Massachusetts. According to the information available on its website, the facility offers psychological counseling, suicide prevention, drug treatment and sex offender treatment, among its other services. Tsarnaev is reportedly segregated from the other inmates, and it is not clear whether he had access to activities listed on the site. US Attorney General Eric Holder, said USA Today, requested phone call and visit restrictions on Tsarnaev following his notoriety in prison. Holden, who released the memo in October detailing the restrictions, said that there is a significant risk that Tsarnaev's communication with others could result in untimely death or substantial bodily harm.
