Jeralyn: "If indigent, learned counsel will be appointed upon being charged. It's not necessary to wait until the Government files its notice of intent to seek the death penalty."

... of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has to be held in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, unless one side or the other petitions the court for a change of venue?

Capital punishment was declared unconstitutional in Massachusetts over thirty years ago, and the last execution in the Bay State actually took place back in 1947. I'm not at all convinced that MA citizens necessarily agree that the death penalty is an appropriate response to a capital crime such as this one.

To wit, while it would be one thing for prosecutors to seek the death penalty in federal court, it just might be another thing entirely to convince a jury of Bostonians to go along with the idea of executing a teenager for the Marathon bombing, even if the crime did happen in their city.

Hawaii and Massachusetts have long been considered the two most liberal states in the country. I can really only speak for public opinion out here, but the overwhelming majority of island citizens -- regardless of whether their political orientation happens to be D or R -- are very much opposed to the concept of capital punishment, which was formally abolished in 1956, when the islands were still a U.S. territory. The last execution in Hawaii took place in 1944, when these islands were held under martial law during the Second World War.

We've had two federal death penalty cases tried out here since I've lived in Honolulu. I know personally that in one of those murder trials, jurors told the judge in no uncertain terms during their deliberations that they would refuse to convict the defendant unless both he and prosecutors first agreed that capital punishment would be taken off the table. It was, and they did.

And in a third case involving a Marine who killed a fellow Marine in Kailua, our city prosecutor subsequently refused to release jurisdiction over the defendant to federal authorities after initially agreeing to do so, because the U.S. Attorney -- who was a Republican from the mainland -- said that he would seek the death penalty in the case. The federal judge upheld our prosecutor's contention, and ruled that because the crime occurred on civilian ground, the state held primary jurisdiction even though both defendant and deceased were military personnel.

(There has long been a tacit understanding dating back to the time of the 1900 Organic Act that because of the large presence of U.S. military forces in the islands, crimes involving U.S. military personnel would be transferred to federal or military court, rather than prosecuted in territorial or state court, although that's obviously not always the case. In not a few instances back in the first half of the 20th century, it was not at all uncommon for military personnel accused of murdering locals -- in one instance, a Honolulu policeman! -- to not be prosecuted at all for their crimes, after jurisdiction over their case was handed to military courts martial.)

I freely admit that I have no idea how Massachusetts residents feel overall about the concept of capital punishment, but it really wouldn't surprise me if their thoughts were not unlike ours, given that we're practically ideological soulmates.

Your thoughts, Jeralyn? Knowing your own views on capital punishment, and were you the defense counsel in this case, how would you feel about a prosecution motion to change the venue to, let's say, Virginia?