On Friday, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the death sentence for the surviving Boston Marathon bomber must be reimposed after a federal appeals court voided it.
NBC News <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-reimposes-death-sentence-boston-marathon-bomber-rcna18450">reported</a> that &#8220;the 6-3 decision rejected defense claims that the judge at [the bomber&#8217;s] 2015 trial improperly restricted the questioning of prospective jurors and was wrong to exclude evidence of a separate crime two years before the bombing.&#8221;
In 2013, two brothers — immigrants from Chechnya turned Islamic extremist radicals — detonated a homemade bomb at the finish line of the Boston Marathon in Boston, Massachusetts. The blast killed three and injured hundreds more.
The Boston Marathon occurs each year, typically on the state holiday Patriots&#8217; Day, and is attended by thousands of people, many from around the world. The attack shocked the state and the nation, and led to a manhunt throughout Boston&#8217;s suburbs.
During that search, one brother was struck by a bullet and pronounced dead at a local hospital. The surviving brother attempted to flee, hiding in a boat in a backyard in Watertown, Massachusetts, before authorities located and arrested him.
After being found guilty and sentenced to death, the bomber&#8217;s attorney argued that while he did act as an accomplice, &#8220;he was easily manipulated by his brother, who they called the mastermind,&#8221; NBC News reported. The bomber&#8217;s legal counsel also argued the judge in the original case acted improperly in several ways:
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A three-judge panel of the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/federal-court-overturns-death-sentence-dzhokhar-tsarnaev-boston-marathon-bomber-n1235528" target="_blank" rel="noopener">U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit </a>ordered a new sentencing hearing, ruling unanimously that U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. failed to allow enough questioning of potential jurors about how closely they followed extensive news coverage of the bombings.
The appeals court also said the judge should have allowed [the bomber&#8217;s] lawyers to bring up a 2011 <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/father-slain-man-linked-boston-bombing-suspect-maintains-sons-innocence-flna6c10058914" target="_blank" rel="noopener">triple homicide </a>in the Boston suburb of Waltham that investigators suspected was committed by [the elder bomber]. The defense wanted to use the earlier crime to show that the younger [bomber] was dominated by his violent older brother and therefore was less responsible for the bombings, because of his influence. 
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Yet, the Justice Department under both Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden argued that the death sentence was appropriate and that the earlier evidence purportedly showing a pattern of violent abuse from the older brother should be inadmissible.
&#8220;The Justice Department said the evidence of who committed the Waltham killings was unreliable,&#8221; NBC News reported. &#8220;[The older bomber] and another man suspected of having been at the crime scene were both dead by the time of the bombing trial, so there was no way to know for certain what happened.
Likewise, the DOJ &#8220;argued that holding a new sentencing hearing would further traumatize the Boston community,&#8221; according to NBC. Attorney General Merrick Garland has placed a moratorium on executions but did not apply that order in this case.
Now, [the bomber] will sit on death row at a Colorado maximum-security prison.

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Supreme Court Reinstates Death Sentence For Boston Marathon Bomber

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Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

The man who killed three people using an explosive device at the 2013 Boston Marathon is suing the federal government, claiming he is being mistreated in prison because his hat was confiscated and he’s only allowed three showers a week.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was on death row until his death sentenced was overturned last July in an appeal, is suing the federal government for $250,000, alleging he is being mistreated in prison, the Associated Press <a href="https://apnews.com/article/boston-lawsuits-dzhokhar-tsarnaev-6291406e4d86d029ae5b4d28d8cde16c?utm_medium=AP&amp;utm_source=Twitter&amp;utm_campaign=SocialFlow">reported</a>. Tsarnaev filed a handwritten lawsuit on Monday calling his treatment at the prison where he is kept in Colorado “unlawful, unreasonable and discriminatory.”
Tsarnaev, now 26, specifically cited guards confiscating a white baseball hat and bandana, which he purchased at the prison commissary, and his limited showers per week, which he claims is resulting in “mental and physical decline.” He claimed the hat and bandana were taken “because, by wearing it, I was ‘disrespecting’ the FBI and the victims” who were killed as part of the bombing he carried out with his brother on April 15, 2013.
The hat Tsarnaev chose to wear was white, reminiscent of the hat he was photographed wearing while placing the bombs at the Boston Marathon. As the AP noted, law enforcement referred to him as “White Hat” during their investigation before learning his name.
The AP reported that the lawsuit was assigned to a judge, who immediately found it deficient because it lacked the $402 filing fee and a “certified copy of prisoner’s trust fund statement.”
The bombs set by Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring more than 260 others. The attack prompted a massive manhunt that eventually identified the two brothers. When police approached them, they began shooting, and Tamerlan was killed. Dzhokhar fled in a nearby vehicle, running over his brother as he lay in the street. The younger Tsarnaev brother hid in a Massachusetts neighborhood for hours until a homeowner called police about suspicious noises coming from his boat, which was parked in his yard. Dzhokhar was discovered hiding in the boat and was taken into police custody.
He was convicted and sentenced to death, but that sentence was reduced to life in prison upon appeal, with a federal appeals court ruling that the jury for the trial had not been properly screened for potential biases.
The case sparked other lawsuits as well. The New York Post settled a lawsuit after it posted a picture of two men alleged to be the bombers. The two men were innocent, but their photos were spread as potential murderers. Conservative host Glenn Beck was also sued for defamation and slander after suggesting one of the victims was involved in the attack. The FBI was also sued by the family of a man – a friend of Tamerlan’s – who was killed during the investigation. The friend was killed after allegedly attacking an FBI agent during an interrogation.
In addition to the lawsuits, the case became a black eye for Rolling Stone Magazine when it featured Dzhokhar on its cover, appearing to glorify the bomber.

Boston Marathon Bomber Suing Federal Government For Alleged Prison Mistreatment After His Hat Is Taken Away

A U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the death sentence of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Friday.
Tsarnaev petitioned the First U.S. Court of Appeals in December 2019 to overturn his death sentence, arguing that his trial never should have taken place in Boston. Tsarnaev pleaded guilty to setting a bomb that killed three and injured hundreds of others at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013.
“Tsarnaev’s death sentences on counts 4, 5, 9, 10, and 14 are vacated, and the matter is remanded to the district court with directions to hold a new penalty-phase trial consistent with the opinion issued this day,” the Friday ruling said, according to Boston’s <a href="https://whdh.com/news/united-states-court-of-appeals-overturns-death-sentence-for-boston-marathon-bomber-dzhokhar-tsarnaev/">WHDH</a>.
Tsarnaev’s lawyers <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/boston-marathon-bomber-wants-death-sentence-overturned-because-trial-was-held-in-boston">filed</a> a petition on Dec. 12 requesting a new sentencing trial claiming that the jury in Tsarnaev’s case was biased against him and violated his Constitutional right to a fair trial.
“This case should not have been tried in Boston. Tsarnaev admitted heinous crimes, but even so — perhaps especially so — this trial demanded scrupulous adherence to the requirements of the Constitution and federal law. Again and again this trial fell short,” Tsarnaev’s attorneys argued. “Fresh proceedings — in an unaffected community, before honest and unbiased jurors, who know that the bombings were [Dzhokar’s] first violent crimes but not Tamerlan’s — present a real prospect of a different outcome. This verdict is unworthy of confidence and this Court should reverse.”
The defense <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/boston-marathon-bomber-appeals-death-penalty-11576152005">pointed out</a> two jurors specifically as unfairly biased against him. One juror had failed to disclose tweets she had made praising police and critical of Tsarnaev in the wake of the bombing. Another juror answered friends’ questions about the jury selection process over Facebook.
The government prosecutors working the case argued against granting the request, asserting that “Tsarnaev received a fair trial in Boston, and the district court didn’t abuse its discretion by refusing to move the trial elsewhere.” The prosecutors also said that the one juror likely misunderstood a questionnaire when she did not reveal her tweets. The other juror’s conversations on Facebook were not prohibited, the government argued.
Tsarnaev carried out the bomb plot with the help of his brother Tamerlan, who died in a shootout with police after the brothers fled.
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/boston-marathon-bomber-wants-death-sentence-overturned-because-trial-was-held-in-boston">The Daily Wire</a> reported:
<blockquote>Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan used two homemade pressure cooker bombs near the finish line of the race, killing three people and injuring several hundred others. 16 people lost limbs as a result of the bombings. During the manhunt for the brothers, the brothers killed MIT policeman Sean A. Collier, kidnapped a man in his car, and had a shootout with the police in Watertown, where they shot and severely wounded two officers, one of whom, Boston Police Department officer Dennis Simmonds, was injured by a hand grenade and died in April 2014.
As <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/us/boston-marathon-bombing-developments.html?hp&amp;pagewanted=all">The New York Times</a> reported, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev said he and his brother were motivated by radical Islamic beliefs. He added that the brothers learned to build explosive devices from the online magazine of Al Qaeada and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/authorities-tsarnaev-brothers-planned-attack-on-new-yorks-times-square/2013/04/25/5efc342c-add5-11e2-8bf6-e70cb6ae066e_story.html">admitted</a> they had plans to bomb Times Square.</blockquote>

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Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Supreme Court Reinstates Death Sentence For Boston Marathon Bomber

Boston Marathon Bomber Suing Federal Government For Alleged Prison Mistreatment After His Hat Is Taken Away

Federal Court Overturns Death Sentence For Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev