Massachusetts

A United States Supreme Court sharply divid­ed along ide­o­log­i­cal lines heard oral argu­ment October 13, 2021 on the Department of Justice’s appeal of a fed­er­al cir­cuit court’s rul­ing over­turn­ing the death sen­tences imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for his con­vic­tions in the 2013 Boston Marathon bomb­ing. Veteran court watch­ers report­ed that the six con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices seemed poised to over­turn the fed­er­al appeal court’s grant of a new penal­ty phase hear­ing to Tsarnaev and to return the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to resolve the remain­ing challenges…

A group of 8^th graders from North Andover Middle School in North Andover, Massachusetts are cham­pi­oning efforts to posthu­mous­ly par­don a young woman who was sen­tenced to death for witch­craft in 1693 dur­ing the height of the Salem witch­craft hysteria.

On May 12, the edi­to­r­i­al board of USA Today affirmed its oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty in an edi­to­r­i­al urg­ing that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev be sen­tenced to life with­out parole, rather than the death penal­ty, for his role in the Boston marathon bomb­ing. ​“Laws aren’t writ­ten for a sin­gle indi­vid­ual, and the death penal­ty applies to many peo­ple,” the edi­to­r­i­al said. ​“Tsarnaev and oth­er infa­mous defen­dants … demon­strate the penal­ty’s arbi­trary nature. While Tsarnaev has a superb legal team, most defen­dants get by with lawyers who are inex­pe­ri­enced, low-paid…

UPDATE: ​“Family mem­bers of two Massachusetts mur­der vic­tims, includ­ing the police offi­cer who was killed by the Tsarnaevs, have spo­ken out con­cern­ing their views on the sen­tence they believe should be imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the Boston Marathon bomb­ing. Now Bill and Denise Richards, par­ents of 8‑year-old Martin Richards, the youngest vic­tim killed in the Boston Marathon bomb­ing, have added their voic­es and called on fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors to drop the death penal­ty in exchange for ter­mi­na­tion of all appeals in the case. In a state­ment in the Boston Globe,…

According to a recent arti­cle in the New Yorker, it has been dif­fcult select­ing a jury for the tri­al of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is accused of the Boston Marathon bomb­ing. Many of the 1,350 peo­ple who filled out a juror ques­tion­naire have been elim­i­nat­ed from ser­vice based on their writ­ten answers. But even of those who remain, only a few have been found suf­fi­cient­ly impar­tial regard­ing Tsarnaev’s guilt or inno­cence and on poten­tial sen­tences, putting the selec­tion process behind sched­ule. Eventually, 18 peo­ple — 12 jurors and 6 alternates -…

A grow­ing body of research into ado­les­cent brain devel­op­ment indi­cates that the brains of even those over the age of 18 con­tin­ue to phys­i­cal­ly change in ways relat­ed to cul­pa­bil­i­ty for crim­i­nal offens­es. The Supreme Court referred to such sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence regard­ing those under the age of 18 when it struck down the death penal­ty for juve­niles in 2005 (Roper v. Simmons) and when it recent­ly lim­it­ed life with­out parole sen­tences for juve­niles. According to Laurence Steinberg (pic­tured), a pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at Temple University, the brain con­tin­ues a process…

In an op-ed for the Boston Globe, three legal experts, includ­ing retired fed­er­al judge and Harvard Law School pro­fes­sor Nancy Gertner (pic­tured), wrote about the ben­e­fits of allow­ing accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev to plead guilty in exchange for a sen­tence of life with­out parole. If Tsarnaev is con­vict­ed, they write, the penal­ty phase of his cap­i­tal tri­al will put all atten­tion on Tsarnaev’s life and back­ground, rather than on the vic­tims of the bomb­ing. ​“Tsarnaev’s lawyers are duty-bound to bring every kind of mit­i­ga­tion before the jury; the…

In an op-ed in the Boston Herald, Michael Avery, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at Suffolk University Law School, whose sis­ter and niece were mur­dered 30 years ago, sug­gest­ed that a plea bar­gain might be a bet­ter our­come for all con­cerned in the case of Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the defen­dant in the Boston Marathon bomb­ing. A tri­al, he said, would be painful for vic­tims and sur­vivors: ​“Boston will relive every tortu[r]ous moment of the bomb­ing, over and over, prob­a­bly for weeks…if Tsarnaev is con­vict­ed, we’ll have a sec­ond tri­al on the penal­ty. The defense…

In a recent inter­view, Judge Michael A. Ponsor, who presided over the first fed­er­al death penal­ty tri­al in Massachusetts in over 50 years, warned that the death penal­ty comes with a ​“heavy price” — the risk of exe­cut­ing inno­cent peo­ple: ​“A legal regime per­mit­ting cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment comes with a fair­ly heavy price.…where there’s a death penal­ty inno­cent peo­ple will die. Sooner or lat­er — we hope not too often — some­one who didn’t com­mit the crime will be exe­cut­ed.” In 2001, Judge Ponsor over­saw the cap­i­tal tri­al of Kristen Gilbert, a nurse who was…