Supreme Court to consider death sentence for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

The Supreme Court is set Wednesday to hear arguments on whether the death sentence should be reinstated for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of carrying out the deadly 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

The Biden administration will ask the justices to reverse what it called an appeals court’s “erroneous” decision to vacate the death penalty for Tsarnaev, 28, arguing that the U.S. will have to conduct a fraught new penalty trial if the lower court’s judgment is allowed to stand.

Lawyers for Tsarnaev have argued that even if the high court vacated the appellate ruling and sent the case back for further review, issues with the jury and the evidence presented during Tsarnaev’s trial would again lead to the death sentence being vacated.

The federal government is pushing for the death penalty for Tsarnaev even as President Joe Biden’s Justice Department takes action to halt federal executions. Former President Donald Trump’s administration, which asked the Supreme Court to review the appeals court’s ruling on Tsarnaev, carried out 13 such executions during Trump’s final months in office.

The U.S. in its petition to the Supreme Court described the April 15, 2013, Boston bombings as “one of the worst domestic terrorist attacks since the 9/11 atrocities.”

Three people, including an 8-year-old child, were killed and hundreds were wounded when two pressure-cooker bombs filled with metal shrapnel detonated near the crowded marathon finish line. Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, both described as jihadists, fled the scene, kicking off a four-day manhunt during which Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Officer Sean Collier was shot dead.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a gunfight with police in Watertown, Massachusetts. An injured Dhzokhar, who ran over his brother as he drove away in a stolen Mercedes, was found hours later hiding in a boat parked in a nearby backyard.

A federal jury in Massachusetts convicted Tsarnaev, who was 19 at the time of the attack, on 30 counts and recommended the death penalty for six of them, including using weapons of mass destruction that killed people.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in July 2020 affirmed most of Tsarnaev’s convictions but erased his capital sentences.

It found that the lower court wrongly denied requests from Tsarnaev’s attorneys to have prospective jurors asked about their media exposure to the facts of the case during the jury-selection process.

The appeals court also ruled that the district court erred by excluding evidence related to a triple murder in Waltham, Massachusetts, on the 10-year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been implicated in those attacks by his friend Ibragim Todashev, who claimed to…