One of the two men who bombed the Boston Marathon in 2013, a terrorist attack in which three people were murdered and 264 other people were injured, including 16 who lost a limb, filed a motion asking his death sentence be overturned.
On Thursday, attorneys for the bomber, who along with his brother executed the bombing on April 15, 2013 that killed Krystle Marie Campbell, 29, Lingzi Lu, 23, and Martin Richard, 8, told the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals that the judge in the case made a mistake denying their motions to move the trial out of Boston. The trial ended in April 2015.
As PJ Media reports, the bomber was convicted on all 30 counts including conspiracy, use of a weapon of mass destruction and the murder of the three victims from the bombing and the subsequent murder of MIT Police Officer Sean Collier three days after the bombing.
The bomber’s defense team admitted during the trial that the two brothers had executed the bombing; the bomber had admitted his involvement just after he was arrested, telling federal agents that he and his brother were motivated by extremist Islamic beliefs, according to The New York Times.
As AP reported, the attorneys for the bomber argued in their brief asking for his sentence to be overturned that his trial should not have been held in Boston because the city had been “traumatized by the bombings, ordered to shelter in place during the manhunt, saturated by prejudicial publicity and united in the Boston Strong movement.”
The first time the bomber spoke publicly about the bombing came just before the judge pronounced his death sentence; he admitted, “Immediately after the bombing, which I am guilty of — if there’s any lingering doubt about that, let there be no more. I did do it along with my brother …”
As Irish Central reported:
One of the victims, 8-year-old Martin Richard, was standing at the marathon finish line cheering on the runners with his family when the second bomb detonated on April 15, 2013. Martin was killed; his sister Jane, an Irish dancer, lost her leg; their mother, Denise, suffered brain injuries and blindness in one eye from shrapnel; their father, Bill, lost some of his hearing.
The Boston Globe said of Krystle Campbell, whose left foot was fractured, left thigh bone was broken, and whose legs were devastated by the bomb, reputedly leaving her suffering for roughly one minute before she died, “Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old woman so loved by her friends that she was a bridesmaid 17 times, lying on the sidewalk of Boylston Street outside Marathon Sports, her body ripped apart.”
Boston Magazine, writing of Lingzi Lu, reported what her best friend Danling Zhou, a fellow Chinese transfer student who met Lu in math class, testified about what happened when they attended the marathon that day. The Globe wrote:
Zhou’s organs were spilling out of a gash on her stomach. She pushed her insides back in while she tried to calm Lu down. Afraid that screaming might waste what was left of her energy, Zhou waited for an ambulance in silence. By the time Boston Police Officer Lauren Woods found Lu, she was alone. “Her whole body was shaking quivering. She had vomit in her hair, eyes were rolling in and out,” Woods called. She stuck her fingers down Lu’s throat, trying to clear the vomit. Others came to try to help with chest compressions.
Woods found Lu’s university ID and started calling her name. “Lingzi, stay with us,” she screamed.