Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has just had his death sentence overturned by a federal appeals court:
AP – A federal appeals court on Friday overturned the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
The three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston issued the decision more than six months after arguments were heard in the case.
Tsarnaev’s lawyers had argued that intense media coverage had made it impossible to have a fair trial in Boston.
The April 15, 2013, attack killed three people and injured more than 260 others. Tsarnaev was convicted on 30 charges, including conspiracy and use of a weapon of mass destruction.
According to a senior Boston court reporter:
During oral arguments in December, Judges Thompson, Torreulla and Kayatta all expressed concerns about the jury selection process.
Tsarnaev will remain in prison forever, but a new trial will be needed to determine whether he’s executed.
— Chris Villani (@ChrisVillani44) July 31, 2020
Judge Thompson writes that, if another trial occurs, it would likely be in Boston.
Among the challenges Tsarnaev brought was an argument that the trial should have been moved elsewhere. pic.twitter.com/QLPEePtHo1
— Chris Villani (@ChrisVillani44) July 31, 2020
The panel said Judge O’Toole should have dug deeper into potential biases held by the jurors, which was a point raised numerous times in oral arguments pic.twitter.com/u9KbD7Jon0
— Chris Villani (@ChrisVillani44) July 31, 2020
I don’t know how you find someone for a jury in a case like this that isn’t biased, or at least affected by what happened. My guess is that he’ll end up in prison on the taxpayer dime forever instead of being put to death, as the law demands.