WASHINGTON (AP) – Supreme Court said Monday it would consider restoring the Boston Marathon terrorist’s death sentence Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, presenting to President Joe Biden an early proof of his opposition to the death penalty.
Judges agreed to hear an appeal filed by the Trump administration, which carried out executions of 13 federal inmates in his last six months in office, including three in the last week of President Donald Trump’s term.
The case will not be known until the autumn and it is unclear how the new administration will address Tsarnaev’s case. The initial indictment and decision to seek a death sentence was made by the Obama administration, in which Biden served as vice president.
Biden has pledged to seek an end to the federal death penalty, but has said nothing about how he plans to do so.
In just over two months in office, the new administration has reversed the position of its predecessor in several court cases. But the Justice Department has not notified the court of any change in its position in Tsarnaev’s case.
Even if the court reinstated the death sentence, nothing would force Biden to schedule an execution date.
In late July, the Boston Federal Court of Appeal overturned Tsarnaev’s sentence because, he said, the judge at his trial did not do enough to ensure the jury was not biased against him.
The Justice Department had quickly come forward to appeal and asked the magistrates to hear and decide the case at the end of the current court term, in early summer. Attorney General William Barr said last year, “We will do whatever it takes.”
Tsarnaev’s lawyers acknowledged at the start of his trial that he and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, dropped both bombs on the marathon goal on April 15, 2013. But they argued that Dzhokar Tsarnaev is less guilty. than his brother, who said he was the mastermind behind the attack.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died after a shootout with police and his brother was hit while fleeing. Police captured an injured and bloodied Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hours later in the Watertown neighborhood of Boston, where he was hiding in a boat parked in the back garden.
Tsarnaev, now 27, was found guilty of all 30 charges against him, including conspiracy and use of a weapon of mass destruction and the murder of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer. during the Tsarnaev brothers’ escape attempt. The appellate court upheld all but one of his convictions.
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This story has been corrected to show that the federal court of appeals dismissed the sentence in late July and not in August.