Trump demands death penalty for Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
Donald Trump has called for a retrial and a new death sentence for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
“Rarely has anybody deserved the death penalty more than the Boston Bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev,” Mr Trump tweeted on Sunday.
“The Federal Government must again seek the Death Penalty in a do-over of that chapter of the original trial. Our Country cannot let the appellate decision stand. Also, it is ridiculous that this process is taking so long!"
The president's comments come after a federal appeals court overturned Tsarnaev's death sentence for the 2013 attack on Friday.
The decision by a three-judge panel of the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals recently overturned Tsarnaev's death sentence, saying that the judge that oversaw the original case did not adequately screen the jury for potential biases.
A new sentencing hearing has been ordered to decide whether Tsarnaev should be executed, but his conviction stands.
The 2013 attack saw Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev detonate two homemade pressure-cooker bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring 260.
Tsarnaev's older brother was killed during a shoot-out with Boston police after spending a few days on the run and Tsarnaev was later apprehended.
Tsarnaev admitted to his crimes after his conviction in 2015 and apologised to victims and survivors saying: "I am guilty of it. If there is any doubt of that, let there be no more.”
His lawyers argue that the 2015 trial was flawed for a number of reasons, including the judge’s refusal to move the case out of the Boston area and social media posts by two jurors that showed they had strong opinions about the case.
The president is a known advocate of the death penalty, having widely called for the punishment to be reinstated federally.
Both the number of executions carried out in the US and public support for the death penalty fell to nearly a five-decade low in 2019, the Death Penalty Information Centre said in its annual report.
In 1989, Mr Trump spent thousands of dollars taking out full-page adverts in major newspapers calling for the reintroduction of the death penalty in the name of the Central Park Five, who were arrested and detained over the assault and rape of a white jogger.
The five men have since been exonerated, but Mr Trump has refused to admit he was wrong, or apologise for the campaign.
Rarely has anybody deserved the death penalty more than the Boston Bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The court agreed that this “was one of the worst domestic terrorist attacks since the 9/11 atrocities”. Yet the appellate court tossed out the death sentence. So many lives lost....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
A 182-page appeals court opinion on Tsarnaev's case states: ”A core promise of our criminal justice system is that even the very worst among us deserves to be fairly tried and lawfully punished.”
“But make no mistake: Dzhokhar will spend his remaining days locked up in prison, with the only matter remaining being whether he will die by execution,” the panel said.
Additional reporting by agencies.
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