Supreme Court Reinstates Death Sentence for Boston Marathon Bomber

Boston Marathon memorial after the 2013 bombing. Source: hbp_pix, Flikr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

The Supreme Court reinstated the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted for the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013 that led to the death of three people and injured hundreds. The decision came on Friday March 4, in a 6-3 vote with the Court’s three liberal judges dissenting.

Though Massachusetts abolished the death penalty, Tsarnaev was sentenced to death on 6 of the 30 terrorism related federal charges brought against him.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled in 2017 that Tsarnaev’s death sentence should be overturned “because the trial judge had not questioned jurors closely enough about their exposure to pretrial publicity and had excluded evidence concerning Tamerlan Tsarnaev,” the bomber’s brother and accomplice in the bombings, according to The New York Times.

The trial judge, George A. O’Toole Jr., blocked evidence alleging that Tamerlan killed three men in Waltham, MA two years before the bombings on the anniversary of 9/11. The defense hoped this evidence would convince the jury that Tsarnaev was under dangerous influence from his brother, and persuade them to spare Tsarnaev from the death penalty.

Tsarnaev did not contest his guilty verdict, but appealed his death sentence until his case reached the Supreme Court.

“Dzhokhar Tsarnaev committed heinous crimes,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the majority opinion. “The Sixth Amendment nonetheless guaranteed him a fair trial before an impartial jury. He received one.”

In the decision, Justice Thomas described the tragic details of the bombing that took the life of an 8-year-old boy and the limbs of 17 people. “Each brought a backpack containing a homemade pressure-cooker bomb packed with explosives inside a layer of nails, BBs and other metal scraps,” he wrote. “Each detonation sent fire and shrapnel in all directions.”

The Court’s decision paves the way to Tsarnev’s execution, though it is unlikely it will be carried out any time soon. The Biden administration restored a moratorium on federal executions that was previously ended by the Trump administration, in order for the Justice Department to review its policies and procedures, according to NPR.

Governor of Massachusetts, Charlie Baker, voiced his support of the ruling, stating “While nothing can ever bring back those we lost on that terrible day, I hope today’s decision will bring some sense of justice for victims of the Boston Marathon bombing and their families.”