BOSTON Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's sentence has been reinstated to death for the terror attack that killed three people in 2013.
On Friday, the Supreme Court reimposed the death sentence for Tsarnaev, reversing a federal appeals court ruling that had voided it in July 2020.
The decision to overrule his death sentence came after the judge in the trial had failed to ensure a fair jury free of bias after relentless media coverage of the attack.
Tsarnaev’s lawyers had argued that intense media coverage had made it impossible to have a fair trial in Boston.
The lawyers pointed to two jurors' social media posts, suggesting they harbored strong opinions even before the 2015 trial started.
While calling Tsarnaev's actions "unspeakably brutal" and insisting he will spend the rest of his life behind bars, the federal appeals court said the terrorist should be given a new penalty-phase trial.
The Supreme Court's 6-3 decision rejected defense claims that the judge at Tsarnaev’s 2015 trial improperly restricted the questioning of prospective jurors and was wrong to exclude evidence of a separate crime two years before the bombing.
“Dzhokhar Tsarnaev committed heinous crimes,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the opinion of the court.
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“The Sixth Amendment nonetheless guaranteed him a fair trial before an impartial jury. He received one. The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit is reversed,” Thomas wrote.
As a result of the ruling, Tsarnaev, who is now 28, will remain on death row at Colorado’s supermax prison.
TERROR ATTACK
Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, sparked five days of panic in Boston on April 15, 2013.
The duo detonated two homemade pressure-cooker bombs at the marathon’s finish line and then went into hiding.
Three nights later, as the brothers attempted to flee the city, they sparked a new wave of terror in the town when they hijacked a car and shot dead Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Officer Sean Collier.
Tamerlan died later that night after a gunfight with police, which ended when Dzhokhar ran him over with a stolen car.
Soon after, police locked down Boston and the surrounding communities for almost 24 hours, with heavily armed officers conducting house-to-house searches.
Dzhokhar was found in the suburb of Watertown, hiding in a dry-docked boat in a backyard.
Tsarnaev’s lawyers did not deny his role in the marathon bombing, but they said he was easily manipulated by his brother, who they called the mastermind.
In 2015, a federal jury found Tsarnaev guilty of all 30 counts he faced, including conspiracy and the use of a weapon of mass destruction.
The jury later determined he deserved execution for a bomb he planted that killed Martin Richard, eight, and Chinese exchange student Lingzi Lu, 23.
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