Date set for Supremes to take up bomber case
Court to decide in October whether to reinstate death penalty vs. Tsarnaev
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Oct. 13 on the Biden Administration’s request to reinstate the death sentence for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Despite President Biden’s stated opposition to capital punishment, Justice Department lawyers wrote in court documents that the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was wrong when it threw out the 27-year-old’s death sentence last year over concerns about whether the jury was screened adequately for potential biases.
Calling Tsarnaev’s case “one of the most important terrorism prosecutions in our Nation’s history,” the solicitor general’s office, which represents the administration before the high court, said the Supreme Court should “put this case back on track toward a just conclusion.”
“The jury carefully considered each of respondent’s crimes and determined that capital punishment was warranted for the horrors that he personally inflicted — setting down a shrapnel bomb in a crowd and detonating it, killing a child and a promising young student, and consigning several others ‘to a lifetime of unimaginable suffering,’ ” it wrote. “That determination by 12 conscientious jurors deserves respect and reinstatement by this Court.”
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in an email that the Justice Department “has independence regarding such decisions.” Bates said the president, however, “believes the Department should return to its prior practice and not carry out executions.”
A lawyer for Tsarnaev did not respond Tuesday to an email seeking comment.
Former President Donald Trump’s administration, which carried out the executions of 13 federal inmates in its final six months in office, appealed the July 2020 appeals court ruling to the high court.
The initial prosecution and decision to seek the death penalty was made by the Obama administration, in which Biden served as vice president.”
The appeals court ordered a new penalty-phase trial to decide whether Tsarnaev should be executed for the attack that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others.
Tsarnaev’s lawyers admitted at the start of his trial that he and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, set off the two bombs at the marathon finish line on April 15, 2013. But they argued that Dzhokar Tsarnaev was under the influence of his older brother.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a shootout with police culminating in his brother running over him as he sped off. Dzhokar Tsarnaev is now behind bars at a high-security supermax prison in Florence, Colo.
The Supreme Court agreed in March to hear the case.