Boston Marathon bomber sues prison over confiscated hat and bandana, lack of showers
The Boston Marathon bomber complained about a lack of showers and guards confiscating his hat in a lawsuit against a federal prison in Colorado.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 27, accuses the Federal Correctional Complex Florence of “unlawful, unreasonable and discriminatory” treatment in the handwritten lawsuit filed Monday. Tsarnaev is representing himself.
Tsarnaev says a guard confiscated a white baseball cap and bandana he purchased at the prison commissary shortly after he was incarcerated at the maximum security facility in 2015. The guard told him wearing the hat was “disrespecting the FBI and the victims in your case, and you know this,” Tsarnaev wrote.
Before Tsarnaev was identified by authorities, he was referred to as a lead suspect seen wearing a “White Hat” while leaving the bombing scene, the Boston Herald reported. The cap was evidence during hisdeath penalty sentencing, according to the newspaper.
“This incident has caused me a great deal of mental stress and anxiety,” Tsarnaev wrote in the lawsuit. “This discriminatory action against me reflects an attitude that has inevitably brought about more prejudiced actions that violate my rights and have resulted in my mental and physical decline.”
The Federal Bureau of Prisons declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Tsarnaev was convicted of killing three people and injuring hundreds more in the bombings at the 2013 Boston Marathon. Three days later, Tsarnaev and his brother killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus officer, set of bombs in nearby Watertown and engaged in gunfire with police, authorities say. His brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed at the scene.
In the lawsuit, Tsarnaev also complained about a lack of showers. Tsarnaev says the prison has a two-phase system that rewards inmates who behave with daily showers and three social phone calls monthly, but he’s been denied opportunity to advance to the second phase.
“I am not a ‘security threat’ when I clean the recreation yard as the orderly and I certainly wouldn’t be a threat if I were advanced to Phase Two and allowed to shower daily,” Tsarnaev wrote.
In 2015, Tsarnaev was sentenced to death, which was later overturned by an appeals court, but he will remain in prison for life, The Associated Press reported.
Whether the lawsuit will proceed remains to be seen. A judge found the filing to have problems, among that Tsarnaev didn’t pay a fee. The judge order the issues to be fixed within 30 days or the lawsuit will be dismissed.
This story was originally published January 7, 2021 at 4:15 PM with the headline "Boston Marathon bomber sues prison over confiscated hat and bandana, lack of showers."