Maybe it’s the snow. There’s about eight feet of it, with snowbanks on street corners even taller than that.
Or maybe it’s the fact that everybody in and around Boston knows the story, the heartache, too well.
But the truth of the matter is, the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the refugee who bombed his adopted hometown, has opened to mostly steely-eyed stares in a city where there is six degrees of separation from those affected by the attack on the 2013 Boston Marathon.
The jury selection, expected to take two weeks, took two months, in part because potential jurors couldn’t get to the federal courthouse overlooking Boston Harbour on so many snowy days. Many thought Tsarnaev guilty. Others were so opposed to the death penalty they didn’t qualify for a jury that may have to impose it.
Standing room only
On Wednesday, the first day of the trial, there was a long line to grab seats in the public gallery of the courtroom. On the second day, there were many open seats.
Defence attorneys for Tsarnaev, now 21 but 19 at the time of the bombings that killed three people, maimed 17 and wounded more than 200, argued that there was no way he could get a fair trial in the city he was accused of bombing.
Then, at the opening, they seemed to make that point moot by acknowledging that their client was, indeed, guilty. "It was him," Judy Clarke, one of his lawyers, told the jury.
Clarke was not only bursting the bubble of the conspiracy theorists who have held signs outside the federal court and accused bombing victims of being actors in some bizarre scheme. She was telling Bostonians what they already knew: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was guilty.
Foregone conclusion
There has been a muted response to the first couple of days of testimony.
Perhaps because it is a foregone conclusion that he will be found guilty and that the jurors will be asked to decide whether he lives or dies.
This is not about getting a result, but about bearing witness. "I want to see him," said Marc Fucarile, who lost a leg, "and I want him to see me."
Fucarile left his prosthetic leg at home and came to court on crutches.
In Boston, many worry about the prospects of the Red Sox baseball team. Few worry about the outcome of the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
As his own lawyer said, it was him.KEVIN CULLEN