Source: American Military News
Boston marathon murderer Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has revised his $250,000 lawsuit against the feds by appealing to incoming U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to go easy on him inside his supermax.
The 26-year-old Boylston Street bomber claims in an “amended” 20-page complaint just filed that his constitutional rights are being violated at the so-called Alcatraz of the Rockies and Garland needs to order it all to stop.
“I am suffering psychological injury, emotional distress, and destruction of my familial relationships,” Tsarnaev writes in his hand-written appeal from the Colorado prison.
He alleges he can’t access his $2,300 prison canteen account; is forbidden to communicate with his young nieces and nephews; has all his mail “censored” along with his telephone calls monitored; and can’t share photos from inside the prison.
As the Herald first reported in January, he is also demanding that prison guards return his white baseball cap and “Aztec-red” bandana they confiscated.
His ramped-up grievance comes as Arkansas U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton claims heinous inmates, including Tsarnaev, will qualify for COVID-19 relief checks if the House passes the compromise $1.9 trillion deal as expected this week.
Cotton’s office told the Herald Monday night prisoners in line for $1,400 checks is “no longer an oversight by bill drafters, Republican or Democrat. It’s a purposeful choice by the left.”
His spokesman added the Republican senator “has criticized Democrats because only Democrats voted — on the specific issue — to keep sending checks to prisoners like the Boston bomber. There was one vote on this specific topic: Amendment 1162 on March 6.” It failed.
A Democratic congressman’s office pushed back saying a “group” of inmates — and not specific ones — will qualify for relief checks as they did when President Trump signed the CARES Act. Litigation is ongoing in the initial round of stimulus checks.
Tsarnaev accuses guards and the warden at the Federal Correctional Complex Florence of being “unlawful, unreasonable and discriminatory.” But this time he also cites “1 through 20 John Does” from intelligence agencies of making his life hell behind bars.
His phone calls to parents and sisters “twice a month” can be “terminated” if nieces or nephews address him “in any kind of way,” Tsarnaev writes. He claims it has resulted in “psychological and emotional distress.”
He also calls out special administrative measures — called SAMS — that must be approved by the attorney general that keep him tightly controlled at the prison. His links to terrorism started with his brother, Tamerlan, who was killed in the manhunt after the twin marathon bombings when Dzhokhar ran him over fleeing the scene in Watertown.
“SAMS is the kiss of death,” said former Florence prison warden Bob Hood. “It’s the most restrictive environment you can possibly put a prisoner in.”
But the lawsuit, according to one observer, is a prelude to what’s ahead.
“This is a plea to Merrick Garland to get rid of the death penalty,” said attorney George Price, a former senior special agent with the DEA now at the law firm of Casner and Edwards.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you see more fights like this,” Price said of Tsarnaev’s death sentence that is before the U.S. Supreme Court. “We are headed for some pretty crazy times, but they are playing with fire — especially with a guy like this.”
The 2013 marathon bombing killed Martin Richard, 8; Krystle Campbell, 29; and Lu Lingzi, 23. More than 260 people were injured or maimed. MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, 27, was shot execution-style by the Tsarnaevs days later.
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