Tsarnaev's attorneys and federal lawyers will argue this issue in federal court in Boston Tuesday morning. And while the dispute is unlikely to delay Tsarnaev's trial, it's an important moment in this latest terrorism trial of the century. Are the feds here are using the SAMs against Tsarnaev because they think he's plotting to wage a terror war from detention? Or are the feds restricting his communications because they don't want the notorious prisoner to become ever more of a political symbol than he already is? And does the Constitution even allow a judge to hazard an answer about which?

Tsarnaev's Argument

Defense attorneys in this case—including the inestimable Judith Clarke—led off their request to end the special measures imposed on them and their client with two temporal arguments. It took four months, they told U.S. District Gerald O'Toole, for Attorney General Eric Holder to implement the communication restrictions upon Tsarnaev and his lawyers. And there are no allegations, much less evidence, that the defendant during that time communicated or attempted to communicate in any sinister way to justify the imposition of the SAMs. Here is the crucial paragraph from the defense motion:

[T]he underlying charges arising from the Marathon bombing and ensuring events in Watertown, for which Mr. Tsarnaev is awaiting trial, are grave. However, the government has not alleged, nor is the defense away of any evidence to suggest, that these events were directed by others still at large or that Mr. Tsarnaev ever had operational authority to direct the activities of others... Nor is there any evidence whatsoever of co-conspirators with whom Mr. Tsarnaev could arrange further terrorist or criminal activities.

The defense says the SAMs cannot lawfully be imposed because Tsarnaev told his friends before his arrest to take his stuff or because his worldwide notoriety since his arrest has generated "nearly one thousand pieces of unsolicited mail." It would be perverse, Tsarnaev's attorneys argue, to punish him for letters he neither sought nor has responded to. Nor should the restrictions be imposed because his mother in May released portions of a phone call with him to gin up sympathy for her son. Preventing sympathy for a defendant is not part of the legal calculus of the SAMs, the defense argues. Here is the link to Tsarnaev's "Motion to Vacate Special Administrative Measures.

The Federal Response

The Justice Department responded to this motion first by making a procedural argument. Judge O'Toole "lacks jurisdiction to hear the motion" at this time because Tsarnaev failed to comply with the requirements of the Prison Litigation Reform Act, a federal law that generally requires inmates to exhaust their administrative remedies before seeking relief in court. Tsarnaev needs to ask prison administrators to release him from the restrictions, federal lawyers argue, and only if (or when) they do not can he come back to court for help. This is the just the latest version of federal government's standard terror law line: "Don't-worry-your-pretty-little-head-about-it-judge."