Boston Marathon bomber's death sentence overturned by appeals court
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the two Boston Marathon bombers, is no longer on death row.
A federal appeals court overturned Tsarnaev’s death sentence Friday, ruling that two of the 12 jurors who sentenced him to death in 2015 were unfairly biased.
Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, detonated two bombs at the marathon’s finish line in 2013, killing three people and injuring 260 more.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a shootout with police as the two attempted to escape justice, but Dzhokhar was captured.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev admitted to the bombing, but his lawyers argued at the trial that he’d been coerced by his older brother. The jury did not see it that way and sentenced him to death.
Friday, the 1st Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals tossed that ruling and ordered a new trial to redetermine Tsarnaev’s sentence.
The court ruled that two jurors were biased against Tsarnaev before the sentencing trial started, citing social media posts introduced by Tsarnaev’s lawyers.
“But make no mistake,” the majority opinion read. “Dzhokhar will spend his remaining days locked up in prison, with the only matter remaining being whether he will die by execution.”
Tsarnaev is currently incarcerated at a federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.
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