Trump Tweets Could Sabotage Prosecutors in Truck Attack, Experts Say
If the Uzbek immigrant charged with the deadly terrorist pickup-truck attack in New York City escapes the executioner, he may have President Donald Trump to thank for saving his life.
Trump’s repeated calls for Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov to get the death penalty could hobble prosecutors and undermine any attempt to execute him by allowing defense attorneys to argue that the potential jury pools have been tainted and the suspect can’t get a fair trial when the commander in chief is calling for his head, former federal prosecutors said Thursday.
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“Prosecutors have to be very careful about what they say before a trial because an indictment is just an allegation and not proof of a crime,” Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago, told NBC News.
Trump helped the terrorist with this tweet. Now prosecutors will have to spend time dealing with motions that the jury pool is tainted. https:// twitter.com/realdonaldtrum p/status/925931294705545216 …
Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, agreed.
“The president has sort of decreed that he should get the death penalty,” Vance said. “Again we are bumping up against the idea that the president doesn’t get involved in individual prosecutions.”
“We are a rule of law country and we operate on the rule of law, not the whims of the president,” Vance added.
Rob Owen, a Northwestern University law professor and former assistant federal public defender who has represented people facing the death penalty, said Trump is giving Saipov's defense team a gift.
"The more publicity the president's comments receive, the more difficult it may eventually be to seat an unbiased jury to hear Mr. Saipov's case, because jurors might be influenced by having heard that the president has demanded a particular outcome in the case," Owen wrote in an email.
Maybe I'm wrong (correct me if I am) but didn't this guy, as most radical Islamic terrorists, want to die in this attack? To imprison him forever would be far worse punishment from his point of view than to execute him.
No glory, no 72 virgins, nothing, just rotting in a cell for the remainder of his existence. Admittedly there is a financial burden on us as taxpayers to keep him locked up for eternity, so I am at odds with myself on this one. Kill him and let his mission be fulfilled or lock him up forever in shame and disgrace from his interpretation of his religion? Tough call really.