Boston Marathon bomber case: U.S. Justice Department asks Supreme Court to reinstate death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
The feds are seeking to reinstate the death sentence against Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev after an appeals court recently tossed out the death penalty for the terrorist.
The U.S. Department of Justice this week asked the Supreme Court to review the decision from the U.S. Appeals Court of the First Circuit — which vacated the death penalty for Tsarnaev, who carried out the bombings with his brother Tamerlan in 2013.
The terrorist attack killed 8-year-old Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell, 29, and Lingzi Lu, 23. More than 280 people were injured and MIT Officer Sean Collier, 27, was murdered by the Tsarnaevs at the start of a nearly 24-hour manhunt three days after the bombings. Tamerlan was killed that night.
The First Circuit tossed out the death sentence because the district court didn’t do a good enough job in asking potential jurors about what they’d read about the immensely high-profile case, the appeals ruling stated.
But in a petition to the nation’s highest court this week, the Department of Justice wrote that the district court had extensive jury-selection procedures that “appropriately and effectively ensured that respondent received a fair trial.”
The appeals court “improperly vacated the capital sentences recommended by the jury and imposed by the district court in one of the most important terrorism prosecutions in our Nation’s history,” the Department of Justice wrote.
“In doing so, the court of appeals announced an unexpected and inflexible voir dire rule that denies district courts the broad discretion to manage juries that this Court’s precedents provide,” the DOJ added.
Tsarnaev’s life sentences — and his assignment to a notorious supermax prison in Colorado — remain in place.
The First Circuit appeals court said Tsarnaev will have to face another jury to determine whether he’ll ultimately be put to death.
“To reinstate the sentences that the jury and the district court found appropriate for respondent’s heinous acts, the government will have to retry the penalty phase of the case; the court will have to conduct (and prospective jurors will have to undergo) a voir dire that will presumably be much longer and more onerous than the original 21-day proceeding; and the victims will have to once again take the stand to describe the horrors that respondent inflicted on them,” the Department of Justice wrote.
“Given the profound stakes of the erroneous vacatur of respondent’s capital sentences, the First Circuit should not have the last word,” the DOJ added to the Supreme Court. “This Court should grant the petition for a writ of certiorari and put this landmark case back on track toward its just conclusion.”
Defense attorney David Patton declined to comment on Wednesday.
He has previously called the 1st Circuit decision “straightforward and fair,” and said prosecutors must decide “whether to put the victims and Boston through a second trial, or to allow closure to this terrible tragedy by permitting a sentence of life without the possibility of release.”
Herald wire services were used in this report.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3dazaAh
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