A federal judge today denied a motion by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense team to move the Boston Marathon bombing trial out of state.

U.S. District Court Judge George A. O’Toole also refused to suspend the jury selection process pending an appeal.

“Contrary to the defendant’s assertions, the voir dire process is successfully identifying potential jurors who are capable of serving as fair and impartial jurors in this case,” O’Toole said in his motion. “In light of that ongoing experience, the third motion to change venue has even less, not more, merit than the prior ones.”

Prosecutors this morning asked the federal appeals court to allow them to file under seal their response to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s third attempt to move the Boston Marathon bombing trial out of state.

Prosecutors cite in their motion that their argument “includes materials under seal in the district court which the government believes will be helpful to the Court of Appeals in its resolution of the issue presented.”

Tsarnaev’s lawyers on Tuesday asked appellate justices to put a stop to jury selection — saying no impartial jurors will be found in Massachusetts — and order the trial moved. That appeal is still pending.

Prosecutors have contended the families of the four victims the accused terrorist is alleged to have murdered — and the more than 260 survivors of the April 2013 bombings — deserve to see him tried here.

Jury selection enters its 15th day today. Not a single juror has yet been seated out of a starting pool of 1,373 and 142 who have so far been called back for interviews.

Tsarnaev, 21, is accused of killing three Marathon spectators, including an 8-year-old boy, with pressure-cooker bombs, and then executing MIT Police Officer Sean Collier while trying to outrun police and the FBI with his late alleged partner in crime, older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev.