Published on: Tuesday, July 13, 2021

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether to reinstate Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s capital sentences on Oct. 13, releasing the argument schedule for the first month of its 2021 term (article available here).

On Tuesday the court released the schedule for the justices’ October argument session, which begins on Oct. 4 and runs through Oct. 13. The justices will hear oral argument in nine cases over five days, including arguments in two high-profile cases involving the federal government’s efforts to reinstate the death sentence of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and the government’s assertion of the “state secrets” privilege in a case against former CIA contractors.

Arguments slated for the October session include:

Wooden v. United States (Oct. 4): Whether thefts from 10 different units in a mini-storage facility, as part of the same crime spree, qualify as crimes that were committed on different occasions for purposes of the Armed Career Criminal Act, which requires enhanced sentences for repeat offenders who commit crimes with guns.

Brown v. Davenport (Oct. 5): In a case in which an inmate was convicted of premeditated murder after a trial at which he was shackled, the justices will weigh in on the standard for determining whether a constitutional error is “harmless” when a defendant is seeking federal post-conviction relief.

United States v. Zubaydah (Oct. 6): Whether the government can assert the “state secrets” privilege, which allows it to block the release of sensitive national-security information in litigation, in a case brought against former CIA contractors by a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay who alleges he was tortured at a CIA “dark site.”

Hemphill v. New York (Oct. 12): Whether and under what circumstances a defendant “opened the door” to the use of evidence that would otherwise be barred by the Constitution’s confrontation clause.

United States v. Tsarnaev (Oct. 13): Whether to reinstate the death sentences that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit threw out on the grounds that the district court should have asked potential jurors about media coverage of the case and should not have excluded evidence that Tsarnaev’s older brother, who placed one of the bombs, was involved in a separate triple murder.

The court did not indicate whether it would hear oral argument by telephone, as it has done since May 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, or whether it would instead return to the courtroom for in-person arguments.