Suspected Boston Marathon bomber wants to postpone trial

BOSTON – A hearing for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ended in a little over an hour with his lawyers no closer to postponing his Nov. 3 trial or relocating it far from the city.

On the venue question, Judge George O'Toole said, "the record is complete" and a ruling will be issued "shortly."

Then he asked attorneys to explain their arguments regarding the trial's current timetable, which calls for the trial to start in less than seven weeks.

Defense attorney David Bruck took several minutes to make his team's case for delaying the trial 10 months.

"Almost all of the work that we have to do to respond to the government is compressed into the next six weeks," he said. For example, the government produced an analysis of Tsarnaev's computer hard drive as recently as a few weeks ago, he said, adding that the defense team needs more time to respond to such new variables.

"This is what is important for this case," Bruck explained, referring to what was on Tsarnaev's computer. "The reason we are so far behind is not, as the government says, things of our own making, but because there is so much to do."

Assistant U.S. Attorney William Weinreb said the government has not been making the defense's job more difficult. It has been supplying evidence in a prompt manner, he said. He cited the FBI computer analysis as an example.

"We produced it as soon as we created it," Weinreb said. Delaying the trial start date would be unproductive, he said, because attorneys will take however much time they are given to prepare.

O'Toole has said repeatedly that he thinks the Nov. 3 start date is realistic. He's made no comments about the venue as attorneys for the defense and prosecution have petitioned him for months in dueling court filings. Prosecutors say the trial should take place in Boston.

Tsarnaev faces a 30-count indictment in connection with two April 15, 2013 bomb explosions that left three dead and more than 260 injured near the Boston Marathon finish line. The indictment also alleges Tsarnaev was culpable in the death of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus security officer during the four-day manhunt that followed the bombings.

If convicted, he could receive the death penalty.

When Thursday's status conference began, Tsarnaev's defense team pushed for additional time to produce potential evidence for the prosecution to review in the pre-trial discovery phase.

"We are hard at work, halfway around the world, collecting as many of those documents as we can," Bruck said. "I don't know how we can turn over things that we intend to use when we are simply not at that stage yet."

Prosecutors were not buying it.

"They are coming up with an argument that would let them delay until a day before trial," Weinreb said. "What we're going to hear is there would never be enough time."