In a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines, the Supreme Court reinstated the death sentence for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Friday’s ruling came almost nine years after the bombing happened and reversed a 2020 appeals court ruling that threw out the death sentence.
“On April 15, 2013, brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev planted and detonated two homemade pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and wounding hundreds,” the Supreme Court wrote, summarizing the case in its Friday ruling. “The jury found Dzhokhar guilty on all counts, and the Government sought the death penalty.”
The trial judge ended up sentencing Dzhokhar to death. However, the appeals court ruled trial judge improperly excluded evidence that could have shown Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was deeply influenced by Tamerlan.
“In an attempt to show Tamerlan’s domineering nature, Dzhokhar sought to introduce the statements of Ibragim Todashev, who had alleged during an FBI interview that, years earlier, Tamerlan had participated in a triple homicide in Waltham, Massachusetts,” the court wrote. “The Government asked the trial court to exclude any reference to the Waltham murders on the grounds that the evidence either lacked relevance or, alternatively, lacked probative value and was likely to confuse the issues.”
The appeals court had also ruled that the trial court “abused its discretion during jury selection by declining to ask about the kind and degree of each prospective juror’s media exposure.” Writing the majority opinion, Justice Clarence Thompson rejected both of the appeals court’s arguments.
“The court recognized the significant pretrial publicity concerning the bombings, and reasonably concluded that the proposed media-content question was ‘unfocused,’ risked producing ‘unmanageable data,’ and would at best shed light on ‘preconceptions’ that other questions already probed,” Thompson wrote. “The District Court acknowledged Dzhokhar’s rationale [to introduce evidence connecting Tamerlan to the Waltham murders] but excluded the evidence because it was ‘without any probative value’ and ‘would be confusing to the jury.’ That conclusion was reasonable and not an abuse of the District Court’s discretion.”
While the Boston bomber’s death sentence was reinstated, it doesn’t appear he will be put to death anytime soon. Biden administration lawyers had argued for the death sentence in the Tsarnaev case. However, President Biden has said he is opposed to the death penalty, and the Justice Department halted federal executions last summer.
