A U.S. judge struck down a motion to allow suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to meet with his family members without having federal agents present.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge George O'Toole denied a request by Tsarnaev's lawyers to allow him to meet jointly with their client and his sisters, without being in the presence of federal officials, reports Reuters.

According to defense attorneys, it's important for them to understand the accused bomber's relations with his family in order to build their case that he does not deserve execution if he is convicted planting bombs at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. However, they argued that the presence of a federal officers prevents normal conversations from taking place.

Judge O'Toole ruled that he would approve a proposal by federal prosecutors to have a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent from outside Boston, who is not directly involved in the investigation, to monitor the meetings at the prison where the 20-year-old alleged terrorist is being held.

Prosecutors say that Tsarnaev and his now deceased brother planted the bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injured 264 others. In addition, prosecutors say that he Chechen brothers fatally shot a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer three days later.

Tsarnaev, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, will go to trial beginning on Nov. 3.

Tsarnaev's 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, died after a gunbattle with police three days after the bombing.

Also on Wednesday, Judge O'Toole tossed the government's claim that Tsarnaev betrayed his oath to the U.S. as a naturalized citizen, arguing that it would encourage jurors to resent him as an immigrant.

Prosecutors had cited Tsarnaev's "betrayal of the United States" and his history of having "obtained citizenship and enjoyed the freedoms" of a U.S. citizen as a reason to give him the death penalty.

"It was unduly prejudicial and I will strike it," O'Toole Jr. said at a hearing Wednesday, according to the Bloomberg News. "Drawing a distinction between naturalized and natural born is highly inappropriate."