Joker didn't throw it away. He left it in his dorm room, along with other incriminating evidence. All he did was to invite the current defendants to take whatever they wanted from his dorm room, since he wasn't going to be coming back (this was via text message around 8 pm on Thursday). See Special Agent Scott Cieplik's affidavit. The defendants decided on their own to dispose of the evidence on the theory it might help their friend.
My guess is the brothers thought they had got away with the bombings and were taken by surprise when the FBI released their video analysis, and people (such as Speed Bump's wife and the current defendants) started recognizing them. That's why their attempt to flee was so haphazard and poorly planned.
.....”The defendants decided on their own to dispose of the evidence on the theory it might help their friend”....
Yea...the bomber himself didn’t chuck the computer....amazing how reporters fail so to give factual information...but then they do want to build their own story.
Pretty obvious this was a scramble of 19/20 yr. olds attempting to cover their friend....and likely scared...from what the court reports have stated.
I can see that....big guys on campus suddenly find themselves not so big after all.
I think your analysis reasonable.
What I don’t understand is why somebody who wanted to get rid of evidence would throw it in the trash.
Are there no fires or bodies of water in the area?
Nice little bonfire topped with a laptop would pretty quickly eliminate the evidence. Or pitching it off a bridge.
The quality of terrorist and criminal we’re seeing is pretty depressing.
I also think that the Tsarnaev brothers thought that they would get away with the bombings and go on with life, or else they probably would have cleaned out their apartment before a one-way mission.