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As clock ticks toward another Trump presidency, federal death row prisoners appeal for clemency

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President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office is putting a spotlight on the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, which houses federal death row. In Bloomington, a small community of death row spiritual advisors is struggling to support the prisoners to whom they minister.  Ross Martinie Eiler is a Mennonite, Episcopal lay minister and member of the Catholic Worker movement, which assists the homeless. And for the past three years, he’s served as a spiritual advisor for a man on federal death row.

USA | Trump calls for execution of Boston Marathon bomber Tsarnaev after sentence overturned due to jury bias

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
US President Donald Trump has said that Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whose 2015 death sentence was overturned by the US Appeals Court this week, must face capital punishment.

“Death penalty! He killed and badly wounded many. Justice!” Trump, who previously blasted the appellate court’s decision as “ridiculous,” tweeted on Saturday.

Tsarnaev, who helped to carry out the 2013 bombing that took the lives of three people and injured over 260, was sentenced to death in 2015. However, his attorney successfully argued before the Appeals Court that the maximum punishment handed out to his client was the result of an unfair trial, claiming that the jury was biased against the attacker due to the attention the high-profile case received in the media.

Arguably the most notorious coverage of the worst US domestic terrorist attack since 9/11 came from Rolling Stone magazine, which put Tsarnaev on the cover, sparking huge blowback across the nation.

Tsarnaev now faces another trial to determine whether he will be executed or will be confined to his prison cell for the rest of his days.

“Just to be crystal clear. Dzhokhar will remain confined to prison for the rest of his life, with the only question remaining being whether the government will end his life by executing him,” the court wrote after announcing the decision on Thursday.

On Friday, Trump had already lashed out at the appellate court’s ruling to send Tsarnaev’s case back to a lower court for a retrial, expressing concern that the litigation might drag on for years.

“So they’ll argue about that for a long time. It’s ridiculous. Think of that. It’s ridiculous,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Florida.

During interrogation by police, Tsarnaev, who was 19 at the time of the attack he plotted and carried out with his older brother, Tamerlan, said that the marathon bombing was supposed to be the first in a wave of attacks.

Source: rt.com, Staff, August 2, 2020


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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

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