Supreme Court Reinstates Death Sentence For Boston Marathon Bomber

On Friday, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the death sentence for the surviving Boston Marathon bomber must be reimposed after a federal appeals court voided it.

NBC News reported that “the 6-3 decision rejected defense claims that the judge at [the bomber’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.”

In 2013, two brothers — immigrants from Chechnya turned Islamic extremist radicals — detonated a homemade bomb at the finish line of the Boston Marathon in Boston, Massachusetts. The blast killed three and injured hundreds more.

The Boston Marathon occurs each year, typically on the state holiday Patriots’ Day, and is attended by thousands of people, many from around the world. The attack shocked the state and the nation, and led to a manhunt throughout Boston’s suburbs.

During that search, one brother was struck by a bullet and pronounced dead at a local hospital. The surviving brother attempted to flee, hiding in a boat in a backyard in Watertown, Massachusetts, before authorities located and arrested him.

After being found guilty and sentenced to death, the bomber’s attorney argued that while he did act as an accomplice, “he was easily manipulated by his brother, who they called the mastermind,” NBC News reported. The bomber’s legal counsel also argued the judge in the original case acted improperly in several ways:

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit ordered a new sentencing hearing, ruling unanimously that U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. failed to allow enough questioning of potential jurors about how closely they followed extensive news coverage of the bombings.

The appeals court also said the judge should have allowed [the bomber’s] lawyers to bring up a 2011 triple homicide in the Boston suburb of Waltham that investigators suspected was committed by [the elder bomber]. The defense wanted to use the earlier crime to show that the younger [bomber] was dominated by his violent older brother and therefore was less responsible for the bombings, because of his influence. 

Yet, the Justice Department under both Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden argued that the death sentence was appropriate and that the earlier evidence purportedly showing a pattern of violent abuse from the older brother should be inadmissible.

“The Justice Department said the evidence of who committed the Waltham killings was unreliable,” NBC News reported. “[The older bomber] and another man suspected of having been at the crime scene were both dead by the time of the bombing trial, so there was no way to know for certain what happened.

Likewise, the DOJ “argued that holding a new sentencing hearing would further traumatize the Boston community,” according to NBC. Attorney General Merrick Garland has placed a moratorium on executions but did not apply that order in this case.

Now, [the bomber] will sit on death row at a Colorado maximum-security prison.

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