An appeals court issued the death sentence and overturned three of Boston Marathon attacker Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s convictions.
The court in its ruling cited multiple errors in the proceedings that found Dzhokhar guilty and then sentenced him to death, including the fact that the trial judge failed to ensure that the jury was not tainted by pre-trial advertising.
The ruling will not result in Tsarnaev’s release, and the death penalty will now be reviewed in a recidivism in a pentalty phase trial.
“Dzhokhar will remain confined in prison for the rest of his life, and the only question that remains is whether the government will end his life by executing him,” the ruling said.
The 224-page ruling was released Friday afternoon by federal appeals judge Rogeriee Thompson.
The ruling began by acknowledging that the 2013 bombing, committed with a pair of homemade bombs by Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, who died in a police shooting, was “one of the worst internal terrorist attacks since the September 11 atrocities “
The brothers’ bombs “caused a battlefield-like carnage”, ending three lives and inflicting “horrible life-altering injuries” on hundreds more.
In fleeing, the brothers “also shot a local campus police officer in cold blood,” the ruling said.
Finally captured and tried two years later, Dzhokhar through his lawyers “admitted that he did everything the government claimed,” the judge wrote, but he fought the death penalty by blaming his dead brother for radicalizing him.
The jury thought otherwise, pleading guilty to all charges and finding that he should be executed on the charges eligible for the death penalty, a recommendation that a district judge followed.
.
