5.Rebuttal Closing — Prosecution

MR. WEINREB: So now you've heard the defense all spelled out for you. The defendant may be guilty, but his brother is even more guilty. The thing is, that's not a defense. That's just the defendant's effort to dodge full responsibility for what he did.

Ms. Clarke told you in her opening statement that the defendant wasn't going to try to sidestep responsibility for what he did in this case, but that is exactly what he is trying to do. His defense is that his brother was the real criminal and he was just going along to get along; that his brother did mostly everything, he was just present.

Now, there's nothing wrong with him making that argument. He's entitled to try to pin the blame on somebody else if that's what he wants to do. But you should see that for what it is. It's an attempt to sidestep responsibility; not to take responsibility.

It's up to you to hold the defendant fully responsible. You should find him guilty because he is guilty. His own actions make him guilty. And the things that his brother did on his behalf also make him guilty. Don't be distracted by arguments about what the defendant did versus what his brother did. It makes no difference. They were partners in crime. These crimes were a two-man job. Each one of them had a role to play, and each one of them played a critical role in each of the crimes. They were co-conspirators. They were partners. And that makes them equally guilty of what they did.

Let's take the death of Officer Collier. Ms. Clarke said that Tamerlan Tsarnaev is the one who shot him. But there's no evidence of that in this case. That is a perfect example of an effort to sidestep responsibility; not to take responsibility.

The video doesn't show who fired the fatal shots, but it does show that the defendant and his brother walked right up to that car. They approached it from behind, they walked right up to the door, and they yanked it open. They knew exactly what they were going to do. They must have planned it ahead of time. It was a cold-blooded execution. And they couldn't have done it without the defendant's Ruger.

The defendant leaned his whole body into the car, and that's what Nate Harman saw less than ten seconds later when he rode by on his bicycle. He said he saw the defendant leaning all the way inside, as if he were trying to get something. The defendant had either shot Officer Collier or was trying to get his gun or both.

Officer Collier's blood was on the defendant's keychain, the one he was using to drive the car that night, and the gloves with Officer Collier's blood on them were at his feet, the feet of the driver's side where he had been driving the car.

There should be no doubt in your mind that the defendant and his brother are equally guilty of shooting Officer Collier, no matter who pulled the trigger.

Ms. Clarke says that Tamerlan Tsarnaev confessed to the killing when he said to Dun Meng, "You heard about the -- you know about the murder at MIT? I did that." Well, what else was he going to say? He was the only one talking to Dun Meng. Dun Meng didn't even know there was another person in the picture.

She points out that Tamerlan Tsarnaev's prints were on the cartridge in the gun, as if that proved that he's the one who shot Officer Collier. But Dun Meng told you that when Tamerlan pointed the gun at him, he pulled the cartridge out of the gun to show it to him, to show him that the gun was loaded, and that happened after the murder of Officer Collier, that's when his fingers were on that cartridge, that you know about.

She also pointed out that he searched the word "Ruger" on the Internet, but he didn't search that until March of 2013, and the defendant had already gotten the gun in January or February.

My point here isn't to try to prove to you that Jahar Tsarnaev pulled the trigger, because as we told you candidly from the beginning, we don't know who pulled the trigger. My point is simply to point out that this is all an effort to dodge responsibility; not to take responsibility. It's an effort to keep trying to point the finger at somebody else, even if there's no evidence of it, because the truth is the defendant isn't here -- isn't trying to accept responsibility for what he did; he's trying to avoid full responsibility for what he did. Let's take Watertown as an example. According to Ms. Clarke, the evidence shows that Tamerlan Tsarnaev fired every bullet out of that Ruger at the police in Watertown. But is that really what the evidence shows? It seems unlikely. After all, the Ruger belonged to the defendant. He, just a month or two earlier, had paid $150 up at the Manchester firing range with his brother to practice firing a 9-millimeter pistol. And when he did that, he listed himself as an intermediate-level shooter. He helped kill Officer Collier in order to get a second weapon. It's obvious that both of them intended to be firing guns that night. That was the whole point of killing Officer Collier. That's the whole point of training to use the Ruger.

Sergeant MacLellan, and James Floyd, the civilian you heard from, both testified they were 100 percent sure that both the defendant and his brother were throwing bombs, and it makes sense that when one of them was throwing bombs, the other one was providing cover with the Ruger.

But does it really matter? Does it really matter whether both of them were shooting the gun? Even if Tamerlan Tsarnaev was holding the Ruger the entire time, the defendant was clearly doing his part. He was lighting bombs and throwing them in an effort to kill the police officers, or at least to keep them at bay. He threw the pressure cooker bomb. Have no doubt about that. He was getting ammunition out of the bag to reload the Ruger, and you know that because his fingerprints were found on the ammunition box. In Watertown, just like at the marathon, just like during the kidnapping of Dun Meng, the defendant and his brother were full partners. They are equally guilty.

And think about -- more about Watertown, something that Ms. Clarke didn't even mention to you. The three-point turn the defendant made after his brother had already been tackled and was on the ground. He tried to kill three police officers by running over them. The Mercedes was pointed in the other direction, away from the officers. He could have just driven that way and escaped. But instead, he made a U-turn, and he floored it, driving directly at those officers.

And why did he do it? He did it in the hopes of killing three more police officers and almost doubling their body count. Once again, the defense doesn't want you to believe that. They don't want you to focus on that because it doesn't fit in with their portrait of the defendant as just a passive follower. But when the defendant attempted those murders, Tamerlan was out of the picture. The defendant was acting entirely on his own. It shows you how independent he was. It shows you how personally committed he was, so committed that he was willing to run over his own brother in order to kill a few more police officers before it was all over.

Let's talk about the carjacking and the robbery. It's true, according to Dun Meng, Tamerlan Tsarnaev did most of the talking in the car, but the defendant, as always, played a crucial role. When the time came, he's the one who demanded Dun Meng's ATM card and robbed him of $800. That money was still in his wallet the next day. And it wasn't until the defendant left the car that Dun Meng was able to escape. Like all the other things the brothers did that night, this was a two-man job. They needed both of them to pull it off, and the moment the defendant was out of the picture, the plot fell apart. Tamerlan wasn't able to do it on his own. He needed his brother's help. And the defendant, he needed Tamerlan's help. That's what it means to be partners.

Who built the pressure cooker bombs and the pipe bombs? The defense says it was entirely Tamerlan, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Both brothers had the instructions for building the bombs on their computers. You heard that a lot of explosive powder was needed to build those bombs, and you know that a bunch of emptied-out fireworks were found in the defendant's backpack that his friends removed from his dorm room and threw out that night.

There certainly is evidence that the bombs may have been built, at least in part, at 410 Norfolk Street, and it's true that Tamerlan lived there full-time in 2013, but the defendant stayed there on holidays and during the summer. He didn't have to spend a lot of time there to help build those bombs. It's also true that Tamerlan's fingerprints were found on things all over his own apartment, but that's what you would expect from somebody who lived in an apartment full-time. And you wouldn't expect to see the same thing from somebody who was just there on holidays and on weekends.

Also, as you heard from the fingerprint expert, the presence of somebody's fingerprint on something means that they touched it, but the absence of somebody's fingerprint on something doesn't mean that they didn't touch it. It may just mean that they didn't have sweaty fingers when they touched it.

Or, more likely in this case, it could simply mean that the defendant was wearing gloves when he touched these things. Inspire magazine specifically advises that you wear gloves when you are building bombs. And you wear gloves for a couple of reasons. One is not to leave fingerprints. One is because of all the messy powder that comes out of the fireworks before you put them in the bomb.

And you heard that surgical gloves with powder on them were found on the passenger side of Tamerlan Tsarnaev's CR-V, his car, the place where the defendant would have sat if they were using that car to help build the bombs.

But more important, really, is how they used the bombs. They decided to explode the bombs on Boylston Street. The defendant had been there the year before. He knew how crowded it would be. He decided where to plant his own bomb. He chose the place where it would do the most damage. Ms. Clarke has suggested to you that when he walked up there, he planted it there because there was a tree. But as you could see from the video, he passed numerous trees on his way to that spot. It wasn't just that there was a tree. He was looking for the most crowded spot he could find, one where he would do the most damage.

And even if he didn't plant it there because there was a line of kids along the railing, you know for an absolute certainty that he was well aware that those children were there. He's staring straight at them in the picture you saw, and he looks at them many, many times in the video you saw. He could, at any time, have picked up that knapsack and moved it somewhere else, but he didn't, because that wouldn't have fit in with the plan. The plan was to make this bombing as memorable as it could possibly be, and he succeeded.

He's the one who called Tamerlan Tsarnaev to give him the go-ahead. The defense struggled mightily in cross-examination of the witnesses to try to suggest to you that the 19-second phone call that's from the defendant to Tamerlan Tsarnaev isn't the call that took place right before the bombings, but you didn't hear Ms. Clarke talk about it in her closing argument because it's obvious that that's the call that took place right before the bombings.

You didn't hear about it because, again, it doesn't fit in with the narrative of the defendant just being the passive, go-along-to-get-along guy.

What you heard during the trial was a perfect example of trying to sidestep full responsibility for what the defendant did, but this one failed so clearly that it wasn't worth mentioning in closing argument, from their point of view. It's an inconvenient fact for them. It's something they don't want you to believe. And you should view all their other claims about the defendant's lack of involvement with the bombs with the same skepticism that you bring to that claim and some of these other claims.

The defense argues that Tamerlan is the one who chose the marathon as the site for the bombing. Where is the evidence of that? There's no evidence of that. The fact that he searched for it a few days ahead of time on the Internet doesn't tell you anything. He may have typed in the search on his computer, but you have no idea whose idea it was in the first place. There's no need to research the marathon if you've been there before, and Stephen Silva testified that his own twin brother and the defendant were at the marathon the year before. And you have no reason to doubt that he's telling you the truth. And he told you part of the reason he knew that was that the defendant told him he had been at the marathon.

Now, the defense has tried, again mightily, to convince you that he couldn't have been there because he tweeted several times during that day, and he didn't tweet that he was going to the marathon. If you were going down to the Boston Marathon to case it out for a possible bombing, would you tweet that? Of course not. Once again, there's no evidence that Tamerlan Tsarnaev picked the marathon as the site of the bombing. But it's important for them that you think that because they don't want you to hold the defendant accountable for everything that he actually did in this case.

Ms. Clark argued that the defendant wasn't actually radicalized. So how deep did his jihadi beliefs go? What's the actual evidence in the case about that? Well, he had terrorist writings and songs and lectures not just on his computer but on every electronic device he owned: his iPods, his thumb drives, the CD that he drove all the way back to Watertown to get before their trip to New York. He had been reading and listening to them for well over a year.

And you know that he had absorbed their teachings. He had absorbed them well enough to tweet them to others. He had absorbed them well enough to summarize them on the inside wall of that boat. When he wrote that message in the boat, he didn't have any books to crib from. He didn't have anyone whispering in his ear what to say. He wrote about them like somebody who had read and listened to and studied the material over and over and over again until he really had fully absorbed its lessons and was convinced of it. And you know that he had absorbed his lessons and was convinced of it because he believed in it enough to murder people. He believed in it enough to execute a police officer in cold blood. His actions speak louder than words.

Same thing about the defendant's tweets and his searches. What do they show you? They show you the defendant had two sides. Yes, he was a young man with a young man's interests and beliefs and habits. That's the side that he revealed to his friends. But he was also a true believer in violent extremism. That's the side that he kept mostly hidden. The fact that he borrows quotes from songs that he's heard to express his beliefs doesn't mean he doesn't have those beliefs; just the opposite. He's just finding a creative way to express them.

And of course we didn't show you every single file on his computer. We didn't show you the thousands and thousands of files that -- operating system files or some random thing he might have downloaded from the Internet. We showed you the ones that are relevant to the charges in this case. The jihadi materials on his computer weren't any less convincing to him because they were outnumbered by other files on his computer, and you know that because he actually carried out the bombings that are recommended in those writings.

Ms. Clarke suggested to you that you shouldn't pay much attention to what the defendant wrote in the boat because of his state of mind. So what do you think was his state of mind when he wrote that message to the world? Well, think about it. Two days earlier, three days earlier, he had pulled off an extremely successful terrorist attack, an attack that received worldwide attention. After the attack, he had escaped. He had then been able to hide in plain sight until the time was right to attack again.

But by the time he snuck into that boat, things were different. He had been shot, and he was bleeding. He knew the police were looking for him. He knew it was just a matter of time before they caught him, if he didn't die first. So he knew this could be his last chance to voice his true beliefs. He revealed his true self when there was no longer any reason to keep it a secret.

The whole point of committing a terrorist attack is to send a message, and the defendant wanted to send a message to America that Americans are destined to lose the fight against violent extremism. And he wanted to send a message to his fellow jihadis. He wanted to inspire them with his words and with his actions. You know that these words, the ones he wrote that night as he lay there in that boat, are his deepest and truest beliefs. He thought they were his final words. They are how he wanted to be remembered. They are the words that he thought would give meaning both to his life and to his death.

You know he was clear-headed and strong when he got into that boat. He was clear-headed enough to smash his cell phones first and to hide them. He was clear-headed enough to pick the boat as a hideout. He was strong enough to climb into it without a ladder, despite how high it was off the ground. He was strong enough to carve words into the planks of the boat that you saw. The message he wrote on the wall of that boat is perfectly clear. It's grammatical. It doesn't wander. It makes sense. He probably wrote it as soon as he got in there. You can be confident that those words are his truest beliefs because when he wrote them, he had no reason to tell anything other than the truth. But now that he's survived and he's on trial for his life, he has every reason to back away from the truth.

And you'll note in that message, he didn't write "we." He didn't say, "This is why we did this," or "This is why we did that." He said "I." It was a note about him, about who he was and what he had intended to accomplish and the message he wanted to send to the world and to be remembered by.

Ms. Clarke said that all the jihadi materials on the defendant's computer came from Tamerlan in January 2012 right before Tamerlan then left to take a six-month trip to Russia. Even if that's true, which I'll get back to, what does it show? It shows that the conspiracy dates back all the way to January 2012. It shows that when Tamerlan decided to go to Russia for six months, the plot didn't go with him. It stayed home with the defendant.

As Dr. Levitt told you, many, many, many people read jihadi materials. They are easy to find. They're all over the Internet. Many are probably exposed to them by family members, by brothers, by sisters, by friends. Most people read the materials and reject them. Only a tiny, tiny number read them and become true believers, and only a tiny fraction of those true believers actually decide to kill people.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev didn't turn the defendant into a murderer by giving him a bunch of magazines and then disappearing for six months. To shred the bodies of young women and children with a homemade bomb, you've got to be different from other people. And if you are the type of person who can adopt a philosophy of hate and commit multiple murders based on reading magazines and listening to lectures, does it really matter if you got them from your brother or from some other terrorist or from the Internet?

If you are capable of such hate, such callousness that you could murder and maim nearly 20 people and then drive to Whole Foods and buy milk, can you really blame it on your brother for giving you some propaganda to believe?

In any event, there's no actual evidence of where those materials came from originally. The defense's computer expert acknowledged that. All you know is that some of them were on many devices, including all of the defendant's electronic devices. Their origin remains obscure, but he read them and he believed them and he was one of those tiny few who decided to act on them.

When two people commit a crime together, it's always possible for one to point the finger at the other. Don't get distracted by that. The defendant and his brother were partners. Each acted on his own behalf and on the other's behalf. They are equally guilty, and that's why we ask you to return the only fair and just verdict in this case, which is a guilty verdict on all 30 counts in the indictment.

Thank you.