WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court said Monday it would consider reinstating the death sentence for the Boston Marathon bomber. Zokhor Tsarnaev presents President B Biden with preliminary test of opposition to the death penalty.
The judges agreed to hear an appeal filed by the Trump administration, which sentenced 13 federal prisoners to death. In his last six months in office, including three in the last week of President Donald Trump’s term.
The case will not be heard until the fall, and it is unclear how the new administration will approach the case. The initial decision and decision to impose the death penalty was taken by the Obama administration, with Biden serving as vice president.
Biden has vowed to end the federal death penalty, But he said nothing about how he plans to do so.
In just two months in office, the new administration has overturned its predecessor in several high court cases. But the Justice Department has not told the court of any change in his position in Zarnav’s case.
Nothing will force Biden to set a date for the execution, even if the court wants to reinstate the death sentence.
In late July, Boston’s Federal Court of Appeals overturned Tsarnaev’s sentence because, he said, the judge assured him at his hearing that the jury would not favor him.
Earlier in the summer, the Justice Department rushed to appeal, asking the judges to hear and decide the case as the court’s current term expires. “We will do what is necessary,” then-Attorney General William Barre said last year.
Zarnav’s lawyers admitted at the start of his trial that he and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnav, had both bombed the marathon finish line on April 15, 2013. But they argued that Zzokar Tsarnav was less guilty than his brother, saying he was the mastermind behind the attack.
Tamerlan Tsarnav, 26, was killed by a gun with police and was shot dead by his fleeing brother. Hours later, police found the bloodied and wounded Zozor Tsarnav in the Boston suburb of Watertown, where he was hiding in a boat parked in the backyard.
Tsarnav, now 27, was convicted of all 30 charges against him, including conspiracy and use of a weapon of mass destruction and murder of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, during an attempt to free the Zarnav brothers. The Court of Appeal upheld all but a few of its assumptions.
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The story has been revised by the Federal Court of Appeals to show the sentence in late July, not in sentence sentence.
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