Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is depicted in this photo presented as evidence by the US law firm in Boston, Massachusetts on March 23, 2015.
American Law Firm in Boston | Reuters
The Supreme Court said Monday it will decide whether the death penalty can be reinstated for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of plotting the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon finish line with his older brother that killed three and injured hundreds. . .
In an injunction, the court agreed to hear an appeal filed by the Justice Department against a lower court decision that overturned Tsarnaev’s death penalty. The 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals said the judge of the district court, US District Court George O’Toole, did not sufficiently ensure jurors were unbiased in the high-profile case.
Tsarnaev’s lawyers argued in court documents that the judges should not consider the appeal of the Justice Department. They wrote that even if the court sided with the Justice Department in the case, it is likely that the 1st Circuit would still impose the death penalty on other grounds related to jury misconduct.
Tsarnaev, 27, was sentenced to 20 life sentences in addition to the death penalty and will remain in prison for the rest of his life, regardless of the action of the Supreme Court.
The case was appealed to the Justice Department in October, while former President Donald Trump was still in office. It will test President Joe Biden’s commitment to end the federal death penalty, which Trump has resumed after a hiatus of nearly two decades.
Civil rights groups have incited Biden to order prosecutors to stop seeking punishment. Biden campaigned to work with Congress to abolish federal-level death sentences and to encourage states to do the same.
The court is likely to hear the case over the term starting early next fall, with a decision expected by summer 2022.
The White House and a lawyer for Tsarnaev did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The central dispute in the case is whether the jurors in Tsarnaev’s case were screened enough to eradicate any potential bias resulting from the extensive media coverage of the bombing.
While the court asked jurors how much they had read about the case, O’Toole turned down requests from Tsarnaev’s attorneys to ask potential jurors more specific questions about the coverage they had seen and their impressions of the event.
Circuit judge O. Rogeriee Thompson wrote in her July 2020 appeal court ruling that the lower court decision deprived Tsarnaev of due process, citing jurors’ questions and the decision to rule out evidence that Tsarnaev’s older brother , Tamerlan Tsarnaev, influenced Dzhokhar.
“A core promise of our criminal justice system is that even the very worst of us deserve to be tried fairly and legally punished,” Thompson wrote in court.
Thompson ordered the district court to send a new jury and hold a retrial “strictly limited to the sentence Dzhokhar should receive on the death counts.”
The Justice Department urged the judges to reconsider that decision. The then Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall wrote in a letter that the scrapping of a “nationally important” principal sentence “on the basis of a circuit-specific rule would be strongly in favor of the intervention of this Court.”
“Given the significance of this case to the nation, the review of the appeal should also include the nation’s highest court,” Wall wrote.
He added that if the court did not overturn the 1st Circuit’s decision, the US would be forced to “give up the death penalty prosecution in this case” or go through some other trial, for which the victims of the bombing “would be killed.” relive their troubling experiences ”. “
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with police days after the bombing. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is in prison in Florence, Colorado.