A judge has denied a request from the lawyers of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to suspend jury selection for his upcoming murder trial in the wake of the terrorist attacks in France.
The Associated Press noted that Judge George O'Toole Jr. did not grant the request. Instead, he ordered that the proceedings will continue and individual questions for prospective jurors will be asked on Thursday.
As previously reported, on Tuesday, attorneys for the Boston Marathon bombing suspect asked that the jury selection be delayed because of the terrorist attacks aboard. The lawyers said that they did not believe they could get an impartial jury after the news and attention paid to the most recent attacks.
Last week, gunmen stormed the offices of Charlie Hedbo in Paris and killed 12 people. The next day, a policewomen was fatally shot and four people were taken hostage and killed at a kosher grocery store.
Tsarnaev, 21, and his older brother Tamerlan, are suspected of detonating two pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Three people were killed and another 264 were wounded in the explosion. The elder Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with police.
That attack, like those in France, was viewed as a revenge terrorist attack.