Court weighs arguments on fairness of Boston bomber’s trial

BOSTON — The Boston Marathon bomber’s lawyers urged a federal court to overturn their client’s death sentence, arguing Thursday that intense media coverage and signs of juror bias led to an unfair trial.

The three-judge panel didn’t render a decision after hearing from both sides for about an hour each.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of all 30 charges against him, including conspiracy and use of a weapon of mass destruction, didn’t attend the hearing.

Tsarnaev, now 26, is in a supermax prison in Colorado.

A handful of survivors and their supporters sat silently in the 1st

U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals room to observe the latest chapter in the April 15, 2013 attack, which killed three people and injured more than 260 others.

“I thought this was all over,” Melida Arredondo remarked briefly as she left the courthouse.

Tsarnaev’s lawyer Daniel Habib argued that the trial should have been held in another city because of intense local media coverage and the emotional toll the attack had on the region.

But Judge William Kayatta noted that polling submitted by the defense ahead of the 2015 trial suggested that almost two-thirds of Boston-area residents hadn’t decided whether they thought Tsarnaev deserved the death penalty.

He also said the poll’s findings suggested there wasn’t a great disparity in public opinion about the case in Boston versus other cities where the trial could have been held, such as New York.

The appellate judges focused most of their attention on questions surrounding two jurors who were allowed to remain on the case, even after defense lawyers uncovered social media posts suggesting they harbored strong opinions.

In one instance, a juror published two dozen tweets after the bombing, including retweeting one after Tsarnaev’s arrest that read: “Congratulations to all of the law enforcement professionals who worked so hard and went through hell to bring in that piece of garbage.”

Robert Bloom, a Boston College law professor, said Tsarnaev’s lawyers have a compelling case to make.

The death penalty trial of 1995 Oklahoma City bomber Timothy Mcveigh was moved to Denver over similar concerns about impartiality, he noted.