Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is pictured in this handout photo that was presented as evidence by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston, Massachusetts on March 23, 2015.
U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston Reuters
The Supreme Court said on Monday that it would decide whether the death penalty could be reinstated for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of conspiring in the 2013 bombing at the end of the Boston Marathon in which three people were killed and hundreds injured along with his older brother. .
In an order, the court agreed to file an appeal filed by the Justice Department against a ruling in the lower court that overturned Tsarnaev’s death sentence. The 1st U.S. Court of Appeals said that trial court judge George O’Toole, district court judge, did not adequately ensure that jurors were unbiased in the high profile.
Lawyers for Tsarnaev argued in court documents that the judges should not consider the appeal of the Department of Justice. They wrote that even if the court were to keep him in the case at the Department of Justice, it is likely that the 1st lane would still carry the death penalty on other grounds related to misconduct by the jury.
Tsarnaev, 27, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in addition to the death penalty and will remain in prison for the rest of his life, regardless of the Supreme Court’s actions.
The case was appealed by the Justice Department in October, while former President Donald Trump was still in office. It will be a test of President Joe Biden’s commitment to ending the federal death penalty, which Trump resumed after a two-decade hiatus.
Civil rights groups have urged Biden to order prosecutors to stop seeking punishment. Biden has campaigned for cooperation with Congress to eliminate death sentences at the federal level and to encourage states as well.
The court is likely to hear the case over the course of next fall during the term, with a ruling by the summer of 2022.
The White House and a lawyer for Tsarnaev did not immediately return requests for comment.
The central dispute in the case is over whether jurors in Tsarnaev’s case were adequately screened to eradicate potential prejudice due to the extensive media coverage of the bombing.
While the court asked judges how much they read about the case, O’Toole asked Tsarnaev’s lawyers to ask more specific questions about the coverage they saw, and their impressions of the event, to prospective jurors.
District Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson wrote in her ruling in the Court of Appeal in July 2020 that the lower court’s decision deprived Tsarnaev of receiving a fair trial, referring to the questions posed by jurors as well as the decision to adduce evidence. to rule out that Tsarnaev’s older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, influenced Dzhokhar.
“A core promise of our criminal justice system is that even the worst among us deserve to be tried fairly and legally punished,” Thompson wrote to the court.
Thompson ordered the district court to appoint a new jury and hold a new trial, “strictly limited to the sentence Dzhokhar should receive on the charges of death.”
The justice department asked the judges to review the ruling. The then acting Attorney General Jeffrey Wall wrote in a short letter that the erasure of a ‘nationally significant’ principal punishment ‘on the basis of a circuit-specific rule is very important for the intervention of this court.’
“In view of the importance of this matter to the Nation, the appeal review should include the Supreme Court of the Nation,” Wall wrote.
He added that if the court did not overturn the decision of the first circle, the US would be forced to “abandon the pursuit of the death penalty in this case” or conduct another trial, requiring the victims of the bombing must relive their disturbing experiences. “
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with police days after the bombing. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is in prison in Florence, Colorado.