BOSTON (AP) — Lawyers for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev asked a federal appeals court on Tuesday to overturn the 29-year-old’s death sentence. Reinstated by the country’s Supreme Court.
Tsarnaev has avoided execution after the Supreme Court last year reinstated the death sentence imposed on Tsarnaev for a bombing near the finish line of the marathon in 2013 that killed three people and injured hundreds. I’m showing a new move for.
His attorneys are now challenging issues that were not considered by the Supreme Court. This includes whether the trial judge erroneously denied two jurors’ challenges alleging that defense attorneys lied during jury selection hearings.
One juror said she had not commented on the incident online, but had retweeted a post calling Tsarnaev a “piece of garbage.” Tsarnaev’s legal team raised these concerns when selecting jurors, but the judge said no further. They say they didn’t do a survey of
Tsarnaev’s attorney, Daniel Habib, told the First Circuit Court of Appeals that “this case went to trial in Boston, despite the extraordinary impact of the marathon bombing on this community,” to question potential jurors. It was a promise to weed out anyone who didn’t qualify for it. judgement. “That promise was not kept.”
The Justice Department continues to push to uphold Tsarnaev’s ruling after Attorney General Merrick Garland last year imposed a moratorium on federal executions While the department conducts a review of its policies and procedures. The ministry has not indicated how long the administration of former President Donald Trump will maintain the hold after killing 13 inmates in the last six months.
President Joe Biden has said he opposes the death penalty and will work to end its use, but has taken no action to do so while in office. does not prevent a person from seeking the death penalty He is currently on trial for the murder of eight people. On a New York City bike trail in 2017.
Justice Department attorney William Glazer said in the Court of Appeals that the trial judge did nothing wrong in treating the jury. but said other disclosures the jury made to the court suggested he simply didn’t fully remember everything.
“There is no indication in this record that I was aware of dishonesty whose inaccuracy would lead to disqualification,” Glazer said.
But Justice William Kayatta Jr. wondered how the judge could have known about Tsarnaev’s allegations without examining them in detail. , said it was difficult for Tsarnaev to understand that he could not at least plausibly claim that the jurors were deliberately lying that they were told to “play their part.”
“For example, if a friend on Facebook said, ‘Be on a jury to avoid the death penalty,’ I find it hard to believe you wouldn’t be arguing the exact opposite of yourself here.” ” she told Glaser.
Some of the bombing survivors who attended the hearing later met briefly outside the courtroom with Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Rachel Rollins.Mark Fukarire lost a leg and suffered other serious injuries Amid the outburst, he said he came to the argument to let the judge know that the survivors “are still paying attention to what they are doing.”
“At some point, you have to draw a line in the sand and say enough’s enough. It doesn’t matter what he did,” Fucarile told the Associated Press.
Tsarnaev’s lawyer said he and his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev set off the two bombs that killed Lingzi Lu, a 23-year-old Boston University graduate student from China. admitted at the beginning of his trial that he had Krystle Campbell, his 29-year-old restaurant manager from Medford, Massachusetts. Eight-year-old Martin Richard from Boston.
However, they argued that his brother should not have radicalized him and put him to death, saying he was the mastermind of the attack.
Tsarnaev was convicted in 2015 of all 30 counts, including conspiracy and use of weapons of mass destruction, and the murder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier while the Tsarnaev brothers were on the run. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a shootout with police days after the 15 April 2013 bombing.
In 2020, the First Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Tsarnaev’s death sentence and ordered a new penal-stage trial to determine whether he should be executed. It turned out that the judge had not sufficiently questioned the jury about their exposure to the widespread news coverage of the atomic bombings. But Supreme Court justices, by a 6-3 vote, agreed with the Biden administration that the First Circuit’s ruling was wrong.