Published on: Friday, July 31, 2020

A federal appeals court has set aside the death penalty for the man convicted of planting a pair of bombs that killed three people and maimed or injured dozens of others at the 2013 Boston Marathon, additional information found here. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit found that a lower court judge did not adequately explore the impact of the extensive pretrial publicity on the jurors who recommended the death sentence for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The First Circuit found the "pervasive" media coverage featuring "bone-chilling still shots and videos" of the bombing and dayslong manhunt required the judge to run a jury selection process "sufficient to identify prejudice." But the district court fell short, the appellate judges found. The Court of Appeals said the district court deemed jurors who had already formed the opinion that Tsarnaev was guilty qualified "because they answered 'yes' to the question whether they could decide this high-profile case based on the evidence." Yet he didn't sufficiently dig into what jurors had read or heard about the case, it said. "By not having the jurors identify what it was they already thought they knew about the case, the judge made it too difficult for himself and the parties to determine both the nature of any taint (e.g., whether the juror knew something prejudicial not to be conceded at trial) and the possible remedies for the taint," the Court wrote.

Tsarnaev's lawyers acknowledged at the beginning of his trial that he and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, set off the two bombs at the marathon finish line. But they argued that Dzhokar Tsarnaev is less culpable than his brother, who they said was the mastermind behind the attack. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a gun battle with police a few days after the April 15, 2013, bombing.

While all three judges agreed the death sentence should be overturned, U.S. Circuit Judge Juan Torruella said he believed Tsarnaev was also denied the right to a fair trial when the judge declined to let the case be tried outside of Boston. "If this case did not present a sufficient basis for a change of venue, there are no set of circumstances that will meet this standard, at least not in the First Circuit," he wrote.

Tsarnaev, who was 19 at the time of the bombing, apologized to victims and survivors of the attack at his sentencing, saying: "I am sorry for the lives I have taken, for the suffering that I have caused you, for the damage I have done, irreparable damage," said Tsarnaev. "In case there is any doubt, I am guilty of this attack, along with my brother."

Tsarnaev is being held at the United States' "Supermax" prison in Florence, Colorado, a site so remote and well secured that it is nicknamed the "Alcatraz of the Rockies." One of Tsarnaev's lawyers said prosecutors must now decide "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."