AFP, published on Friday, March 4, 2022 at 5:47 p.m.
The United States Supreme Court on Friday reinstated the death penalty for one of the two perpetrators of the deadly Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, in a document highlighting President Joe Biden’s controversy over the death penalty.
The sentence of 28-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was overturned on appeal due to procedural issues related to the composition of the jury and the exclusion of elements during the trial.
The Supreme Court overturned the decision by a majority of six out of nine judges, all conservatives. “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev committed horrible crimes. The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed him a fair trial by an impartial jury, and he won it,” she said.
In 2013, at the age of 19, the Chechen student and his older brother Tamerlan planted two improvised explosive devices near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people, including an 8-year-old child, and injuring 264.
Identified by surveillance cameras, the two brothers fled, killing a police officer while fleeing. Three days after the attack, the eldest was shot dead in a clash with police.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found wounded, hidden in a boat. He had written on the wall that he wanted revenge for the Muslims killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
– “Waste of time” –
During his trial in Boston in 2015, his lawyers claimed that the young man was under the influence of his self-radicalized elder. Without denying the seriousness of the facts, they pleaded for life in prison. The jurors were unconvinced and opted for the death penalty.
In 2020, a federal appeals court upheld the conviction, but overturned the death sentence, citing two irregularities.
For her, in this high-profile case, it would be necessary to ask potential jurors about what they read or saw during the attack, in order to exclude those who had already formed their opinion.
“The right to an impartial jury does not require ignorance” in the case, the Supreme Court said in a ruling.
Similarly, according to the appellate court, the trial court erred in rejecting the defense’s request to provoke a triple murder in 2011, possibly committed by the eldest of the Tsarnaev family, as proof of his leadership character.
Since all the main characters are dead, the court is right to exclude elements “without the nature of evidence that would confuse the jurors and would be nothing but a waste of time,” the Supreme Court ruled.
The three progressive magistrates expressed their disagreement in a separate text. These elements were “critical of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense” because they show his brother’s violent nature and the influence he exerts on his younger brother.
– “Difficult to understand” –
Although the decision of the Court of Appeals left Johar Tsarnev in prison for life, it was sharply criticized by Donald Trump, then president. An ardent supporter of the death penalty, he asked his government to seize the Supreme Court.
Once in the White House, Joe Biden could withdraw this request, but he let it go. During his campaign, however, the Democrat promised to work for the abolition of the death penalty at the federal level, and once elected, he imposed a moratorium on federal executions.
This apparent contraction was noted during a hearing by Conservative Judge Amy Connie Barrett.
The administration “declared a moratorium on federal executions, but you are defending the death penalty” for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, she told a Justice Ministry spokesman. “If you win, he will be sentenced to live under the threat of the death penalty, which the government does not intend to apply (…) It is difficult for me to understand the purpose.”