Lawyers for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are asking the judge to suspend jury selection for "at least one month" — because of last week's terror attacks in Paris.
Such a delay, they argued in a motion filed late Tuesday, "would allow some time for the extraordinary prejudice flowing from these events — and the comparison of those events to those at issue in this case — to diminish."
Tsarnaev's lawyers said news accounts have drawn parallels between the Paris and Boston attacks, noting that in both cases the suspects were brothers and were homegrown terrorists influenced by radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
For example, they said, a newspaper recently quoted a Massachusetts Congressman, William Keating, as saying, "It's like Boston is reliving what happened all over again ... I'm watching what's happening in Paris, and I'm thinking of Watertown."
Some of these articles came before all the potential jurors were admonished by the judge to disregard news reports, Tsarnaev's lawyers said. They said the court shouldn't try to select a jury while potential jurors "still are absorbing the evolving events in Europe."
The judge will likely wait to hear from prosecutors before ruling on the motion. More than 260 people were injured and three people killed in the April 15 attack on the Boston Marathon, allegedly carried out by Tsarnaev and his older brother, who died in a police chase.