AKIPRESS.COM - Lawyers for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston Marathon suspect, are again asking a federal judge to delay his trial until September, reports The Guardian.

In a motion filed on Tuesday, Tsarnaev’s lawyers argued that the trial, currently scheduled to start with jury selection on 5 January, would begin faster than “99 of the 119 federal capital trials to get underway since 2004.”

Tsarnaev, 21, has pleaded not guilty to 30 federal charges, including using a weapon of mass destruction and a faces the possibility of the death penalty if convicted. He was indicted 18 months ago.

Three people died, and more than 260 were injured when two pressure cooker bombs went off at the finish line of the marathon on 15 April,, 2013.

Defense attorneys argued that a September 2015 trial date – or any additional delay the judge seeks to grant – would be more realistic and fair, given the “extraordinary complexity and international dimensions” of the case.

Judge George O’Toole, this past September, denied a similar request by Tsarnaev’s lawyers to delay the trial, as well as a related request to move the trial out of Boston.

Tsarnaev’s lawyers on Monday filed arguments again seeking to have his trial moved out of state, drawing parallels between media coverage of the case and that of the 1997 trial of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, which was moved to Denver.

Tsarnaev’s older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, died in a shootout with police in the days after the bombing.