Defense attorneys Miriam Conrad (L) and Judy Clarke (center) flank Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as Judge Marianne Bowler (R) looks on in court in Boston, Massachusetts in this July 10, 2013 court sketch.
The teen accused in the Boston Marathon bombings is requesting that more legal help be provided to him.
In a motion filed Monday, a lawyer for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev requested that a third lawyer be appointed to the 19-year-old’s defense team.
Judy Clarke, Tsarnaev’s court-appointed attorney, filed the motion that request David Bruck be appointed as a third lawyer. Clarke cited the scope of the work that will needed to be done to defend Tsarnaev.
“Media reports have described the global scope of the investigation, involving hundreds of agents and witness interviews. Counsel expect that the amount of discovery that this investigation will produce will be truly massive,” Clarke wrote, adding that even if the case did not potentially include the death penalty, the case would still be “daunting.”
Bruck, of Virginia, is a lawyer who specializes in the death penalty. The Virginia lawyer has three decades worth of experience defending death penalty defendants including Mohamed Rashed Al-Owhali, who was spared the death penalty and is instead serving life without parole for his role in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kenya.
Last week, Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty to a 30-count indictment. A pre-trial hearing is set for September.
Follow Michael Naughton on Twitter @metrobosmike.
