Tag Archives: Boston Marathon bomber

Biden administration pushes for Boston Marathon bomber death sentence

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department has urged the Supreme Court to reinstate the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, despite President Joe Biden’s stated opposition to capital punishment.

The department in a 48-page brief filed late on Monday argued that a lower court wrongly overturned Tsnarnaev’s death sentence and ordered a new trial to determine what sentence he deserved for carrying out with his older brother the attack that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others.

The filing marked the latest deviation between the policy views of Biden, a Democrat who has said he wants to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and the Justice Department, whose independence he has vowed to promote.

“The jury carefully considered each of respondent’s crimes and determined that capital punishment was warranted for the horrors that he personally inflicted,” Acting Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said in the Justice Department’s brief.

David Patton, Tsarnaev’s lawyer, has argued that the U.S. government should allow his client to serve life in prison. Patton did not respond to a request for comment.

In overturning Tsarnaev’s death sentence, the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in July 2020 ruled that the trial judge “fell short” in screening jurors for potential bias following pervasive news coverage of the bombing. It ordered a new trial over the sentence he should receive for the death penalty-eligible crimes for which he was convicted.

Tsarnaev is a Kyrgyzstan-born U.S. citizen.

The Justice Department under Republican former President Donald Trump initiated the government’s appeal of the 1st Circuit ruling, and the Supreme Court in March agreed to take up the case. It will hear arguments and issue a ruling in its next term, which starts in October and ends in June 2022.

Tsarnaev, now 27, and his brother, Tamerlan, precipitated five days of panic in Boston when they detonated two homemade pressure-cooker bombs at the marathon’s finish line on April 15, 2013 – tearing through the packed crowd and causing many people to lose legs – and then tried to flee the city.

In the following days, they also killed a police officer, Sean Collier. Tsarnaev’s brother died after a gunfight with police.

Jurors in 2015 found Tsarnaev guilty of all 30 counts he faced and later determined he deserved execution for a bomb he planted that killed Martin Richard, 8, and Chinese exchange student Lingzi Lu, 23. Restaurant manager Krystle Campbell, 29, was also killed.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court to weigh reinstating Boston marathon bomber’s death sentence

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider the U.S. Justice Department’s bid to reinstate Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s death sentence for helping carry out the 2013 attack that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others.

The department’s appeal, filed before former President Donald Trump left office in January, challenged a lower court’s decision ordering a new trial over the sentence Tsarnaev should receive for the death penalty-eligible crimes for which he was convicted.

President Joe Biden’s administration has given no indication it plans to reverse the Trump administration’s approach to the case, as it has done in several other cases pending at the court.

The 27-year-old Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, precipitated five days of panic in Boston when they detonated two homemade pressure cooker bombs at the marathon’s finish line on April 15, 2013, and then tried to flee the city. In the days that followed, they also killed a police officer. Tsarnaev’s brother died after a gunfight with police.

Jurors in 2015 found Tsarnaev guilty of all 30 counts he faced and later determined he deserved execution for a bomb he planted that killed Martin Richard, 8, and Chinese exchange student Lingzi Lu, 23. Restaurant manager Krystle Campbell, 29, was also killed.

The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the trial judge “fell short” in screening jurors for potential bias following pervasive news coverage of the bombings.

The Justice Department appealed that ruling, which ordered a new trial over the sentence to be given for the death penalty-eligible charges. The department argued that the appeals court adopted a standard that wrongly denied trial judges the “broad discretion” to manage juries provided for by Supreme Court precedents.

Prosecutors said that if the ruling stands, it would have to retry the death penalty phase of the case and “victims will have to once again take the stand to describe the horrors that respondent inflicted on them.”

The justices will hear oral arguments and issue a ruling in the court’s next term, which starts in October and ends in June 2022.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Trump says federal government should again seek death penalty for Boston bomber Tsarnaev

By Pete Schroeder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said Sunday that the federal government should again seek the death penalty for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

In a tweet, Trump said the federal government must challenge a Friday appeals court decision overturning the death penalty for the 2013 attack.

“Rarely has anybody deserved the death penalty more than the Boston Bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev,” tweeted Trump. “The Federal Government must again seek the Death Penalty in a do-over of that chapter of the original trial.”

A three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld much of Tsarnaev’s conviction Friday but ordered a new trial over what sentence Tsarnaev should receive for the death penalty-eligible crimes he was convicted of.

The federal government is reviewing the ruling. Prosecutors could ask the full appeals court to reconsider or appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, set off a pair of homemade pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line of the world-renowned race in 2013, tearing through the packed crowd, killing three people and wounding more than 260 others.

Tsarnaev admitted to his crimes after his conviction in 2015, and apologized to the victims.

(Reporting by Pete Schroeder; editing by Diane Craft)

Boston Marathon bomber seeks to avoid death penalty

Boston Marathon bomber seeks to avoid death penalty
By Tim McLaughlin

BOSTON (Reuters) – Lawyers for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Thursday will try to persuade a federal appeals court that the death sentence he faces is unfair because it was handed down by a tainted jury.

Tsarnaev’s defense team, in briefs filed with the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, have argued that the publicity and manhunt leading to his capture in April 2013 biased the pool of potential jurors, including one actual juror who joined the unanimous vote for the death penalty.

The then-19-year-old Tsarnaev and his 26-year-old brother Tamerlan sparked five days of panic in Boston when they detonated a pair of homemade pressure cooker bombs at the marathon’s finish line, killing three people and injuring more than 200.

The pair eluded capture for days, punctuated by a gunbattle with police in Watertown, Massachusetts, in which Tamerlan was killed. Boston and most of its suburbs were locked down for a day as armed officers and troops conducted a house-to-house search for Dzhokhar.

Tsarnaev, now 26, was sentenced to death in 2015 after a jury found him guilty of killing three people in the April 15, 2013 bombing – Martin Richard, 8; Chinese exchange student Lingzi Lu, 26, and restaurant manager Krystle Campbell – and murdering Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, 26, three days later as the brothers attempted to flee.

Tsarnaev is not expected to be present during two hours of oral arguments at the same federal courthouse in Boston where he was convicted. His lawyers are asking the appeals court to reverse his death sentence.

“Tsarnaev was tried in a community still suffering from his crimes,” his defense team argued in court papers. “Two of the jurors who voted to sentence him to death lied during (jury selection), including the foreperson, who falsely denied calling Tsarnaev a ‘piece of garbage’ on Twitter, and, as the government concedes, failed to disclose that she and her family had sheltered in place in their Dorchester home during the manhunt.”

U.S. Justice Department lawyers say Tsarnaev received a fair trial and the jury was picked from a population mostly opposed to the death penalty. During his trial, a poll by the Boston Globe showed that about two-thirds of Massachusetts residents favored a life sentence for Tsarnaev.

During the trial, the family of the youngest victim, Richard, also asked prosecutors to consider taking the death penalty off the table.

(Reporting By Tim McLaughlin; Editing by Scott Malone and Grant McCool)