Federal Appeals Court Overturns Death Sentence in Boston Marathon Bombing

A pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (pic­tured) for his role in the April 2013 Boston Marathon bomb­ing that killed three peo­ple and injured more than 250 others. 

The pan­el unan­i­mous­ly ruled on July 31, 2020, the court ruled that U.S. District Court Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. had failed to ade­quate­ly ques­tion jurors about their expo­sure to per­va­sive pre­tri­al pub­lic­i­ty about the case. ​“A core promise of our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is that even the very worst among us deserves to be fair­ly tried and law­ful­ly pun­ished,” Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson, joined by Judges William J. Kayatta Jr. and Juan Rafael Torruella, wrote. ​“Despite a dili­gent effort, the judge here did not meet th[at] standard.” 

With Judge Torruella dis­sent­ing, the court ruled 2 – 1 that Tsarnaev had been prop­er­ly tried in Boston.

The court grant­ed Tsarnaev a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing, say­ing that while the tri­al court prop­er­ly inquired as to the sources of infor­ma­tion from which jurors had heard about Tsarnaev and the bomb­ing, it failed to ques­tion nine of the twelve impan­eled jurors about the con­tent of what they had read and heard. Some of that cov­er­age, Thompson not­ed, ​“includ­ed inac­cu­rate or inad­mis­si­ble infor­ma­tion — like the details of [a hos­pi­tal inter­ro­ga­tion before he had been read his rights] and the opin­ions of pub­lic offi­cials that he should die.”

The tri­al court’s fail­ure to dis­cern what the jurors knew, Thompson wrote, improp­er­ly ​“delegate[d] to poten­tial jurors the work of judg­ing their own impar­tial­i­ty.” That made it ​“too dif­fi­cult for [the court] and the par­ties to deter­mine both the nature of any taint … and the pos­si­ble reme­dies for the taint,” she said.

The court’s deci­sion enabled it to avoid hav­ing to address charges of actu­al bias against two of the jurors. Tsarnaev’s defense lawyers had pre­sent­ed the court with evi­dence of bias that includ­ed undis­closed tweets by the jury fore­woman pri­or to tri­al call­ing Tsarnaev ​“that piece of garbage.”

Although the appeals court ordered the dis­trict court to con­duct a new sen­tenc­ing tri­al on Tsarnaev’s cap­i­tal mur­der charges, it upheld the mul­ti­ple life sen­tences the low­er court imposed on non-cap­i­tal charges. The pan­el also ordered that Tsarnaev be acquit­ted of three firearms pos­ses­sion charges, but ​“just to be crys­tal clear,” Judge Thompson added that ​“Dzhokhar [Tsarnaev] will remain con­fined to prison for the rest of his life, with the only ques­tion remain­ing being whether the gov­ern­ment will end his life by executing him.”

The U.S. attorney’s office in Boston, which tried the case, did not offer an imme­di­ate com­ment, but Carmen M. Ortiz, who was U.S. attor­ney at the time of the Tsarnaev tri­al, told the Washington Post the rul­ing was ​“unfor­tu­nate and dis­ap­point­ing.” “[T]he most dis­ap­point­ing piece of this,” she said, ​“is that it brings tremen­dous pain and suf­fer­ing for vic­tims and vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, and sur­vivors of Tsarnaev’s crimes. My heart goes out to them.” Federal pros­e­cu­tors have the option of seek­ing rehear­ing before all the appeals judges of the First Circuit, peti­tion­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case, or accept­ing the out­come of the appeal. In the lat­ter case, pros­e­cu­tors would have to decide whether to con­duct a new penal­ty tri­al or end the case by drop­ping the death penalty.

Tsarnaev’s lawyers praised ​“the Court’s straight­for­ward and fair deci­sion.” In a state­ment released after the rul­ing was announced, they wrote: ​“If the gov­ern­ment wish­es to put some­one to death, it must make its case to a fair­ly select­ed jury that is pro­vid­ed all rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion. The court right­ly acknowl­edges, as do we, the extra­or­di­nary harm done to the vic­tims of the bomb­ing. It is now up to the gov­ern­ment to deter­mine whether to put the vic­tims and Boston through a sec­ond tri­al, or to allow clo­sure to this ter­ri­ble tragedy by per­mit­ting a sen­tence of life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of release,”

The deci­sion pro­duced strong and var­ied reac­tion among the sur­viv­ing bomb­ing vic­tims and the Boston com­mu­ni­ty. Robert Wheeler, who suf­fered trau­mat­ic brain injury and hear­ing loss, as well as lac­er­a­tions from fly­ing glass after the bomb­ing, said ​“I just feel betrayed, and I’m tru­ly heart­bro­ken. … The smells, the sul­fur, I just remem­ber that every day.” 

Two of Liz Norden’s sons lost legs in the bomb­ings. The deci­sion, she said, left her ​“in dis­be­lief.” ​“If this case didn’t deserve the death penal­ty, what would?” she said. 

Laurie Scher, who was work­ing in a med­ical tent at the marathon, said ​“I was in tears because it brings it all back. … So many of us were afraid this was going to hap­pen, because he did get the death penal­ty, this was going to keep com­ing back, and it opens up old wounds and it is devastating.”

Bill and Denise Richard, whose son Martin was the youngest vic­tim killed in the bomb­ing, referred reporters to a state­ment they made in 2015 about the case. The Boston Globe edi­to­r­i­al board referred to the state­ment in a July 31 edi­to­r­i­al call­ing for the end of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. The newspaper wrote:

“In 2015, the plea of Bill and Denise Richard — the par­ents of Martin Richard, the youngest vic­tim of the Boston Marathon bomb­ing — graced our front page.

“‘We know that the gov­ern­ment has its rea­sons for seek­ing the death penal­ty,’ they wrote, ​‘but the con­tin­ued pur­suit of that pun­ish­ment could bring years of appeals and pro­long reliv­ing the most painful day of our lives. We hope our two remain­ing chil­dren do not have to grow up with the lin­ger­ing, painful reminder of what the defen­dant took from them, which years of appeals would undoubtedly bring.’

“Their words were painful­ly pre­scient. Friday, that appeals process result­ed in the death sen­tence of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev being thrown out, ensur­ing a pro­tract­ed legal fight that will only extend and ampli­fy the Richards’ already unthinkable pain.”

Globe colum­nist Adrian Walker wrote that “[i]f any case calls for the death penal­ty,” this was it. But, he said, ​“I believe that anoth­er Boston Marathon tri­al is the last thing this city needs. I believe such a tri­al would bring lit­tle in the way of jus­tice, or ​‘clo­sure.’ I think it is time for this case to end.”