USA | Justice Department To Ask Supreme Court To Reinstate Death Sentence For Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

WASHINGTON (CBS/AP) — The Justice Department will ask the Supreme Court Wednesday to reinstate the death penalty for convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Lawyers for the Biden administration will argue that a jury had no need to examine evidence that the government itself relied on at an earlier phase of the case.

Tsarnaev’s guilt is not at issue in the case the justices will hear, just whether he should be sentenced to life in prison, or death.

The main focus will be on evidence that Tsarnaev’s lawyers wanted the jury to hear that supported their argument that his older brother, Tamerlan, was the mastermind of the attack and that the impressionable younger brother was somehow less responsible. The evidence implicated Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a triple killing in Waltham on Sept. 11, 2011.

The federal appeals court in Boston ruled last year that the trial judge made a mistake in excluding the evidence and threw out Tsarnaev’s death sentence.

There’s also a second issue in the case: whether the trial judge did enough to question jurors about their exposure to extensive news coverage of the bombing.

The Trump administration, which carried out 13 executions in its last six months, quickly appealed. When the new administration didn’t indicate any change of view, the Supreme Court agreed to review the case.

Tsarnaev’s lawyers have never contested that he and his brother set off the two bombs near the marathon finish line on April 15, 2013. Lingzi Lu, a 23-year-old Boston University graduate student from China; Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager from Medford; and 8-year-old Martin Richard, who had gone to watch the marathon with his family, were killed. More than 260 people were injured.

During a four-day manhunt for the bombers, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Officer Sean Collier was shot dead in his car. Boston Police Officer Dennis Simmonds also died a year after he was wounded in a confrontation with the bombers.

The Supreme Court is not expected to rule on the case until sometime next year. If they rule in Tsarnaev’s favor, the government would have to decide whether to move forward with a new sentencing trial to attempt to get a new death sentence.

Source: boston.cbslocal.com, Staff, October 13, 2021

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