Yahoo News 2013 Boston Marathon bomber’s death sentence overturned on appeal
Convicted Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has had his death-penalty sentence overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals.
The decision does not clear 27-year-old. The court ordered a new trial on whether he must face execution, but left in place most of his convictions.
Tsarnaev, along with his older brother, Tamerlan, were convicted of killing three people and injuring hundreds of others with two bombs at the 2013 marathon.
A federal appeals court on Friday overturned the death sentence of 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, according to the Associated Press.
The ruling was made by a three-judge panel of the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which determined that the judge who oversaw the case did not adequately screen jurors for potential bias ahead of Tsarnaev’s death sentence on June 24, 2015.
The appeals court ordered that a new penalty-phase trial be given to the now 27-year-old, who, along with his older brother, Tamerlan, were convicted of killing three people and injuring over 250 more when they set off bombs at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013.
Lawyers for Tsarnaev argued to the appeals court that there were a number of errors with the trial, focusing primarily on the initial judge’s refusal to move the case out of Boston. They also pointed to social media posts that surfaced from two jurors suggesting strong opinions before the trial began in 2015.
The case will not be fully retried. The appeals court left in place convictions on numerous charges for the 2013 attack, including using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death, and with malicious destruction of property, which made Tsarnaev eligible for the death penalty.
For this, he will remain locked up for the remainder of his life. The death penalty is also still on the table, but it will be up to a new jury to determine the proper sentence for Tsarnaev. He remains behind bars at a high-security supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.
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