BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — The Department of Justice said they will once again seek the death penalty for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. This comes after a federal appeals court tossed out his death sentence last month.
“We will take it up to the Supreme Court and we will continue to pursue the death penalty,” Attorney General William Barr told the Associated Press on Thursday.
The U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last month that the trial judge did not do enough to prevent biased jurors from being selected.
The court wrote that Tsarnaev “will remain confined to prison for the rest of his life, with the only remaining question being whether the government will end his life by executing him.”
In response to the Department of Justice’s announcement, U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said he “respectfully” disagrees with the appellate court’s decision.
Tsarnaev “is an ideologically driven mass killer who, with his brother, detonated at the finish line of the Boston Marathon two home-made bombs specifically designed to rip people apart, killing three — a young boy and two women — maiming seventeen, and injuring hundreds; shot a police officer three times in the head so they could steal his sidearm; and exchanged thousands of rounds with police officers in Watertown,” Lelling said in a statement.
Lelling said that he has heard and respects the voices “calling for the Department to drop its pursuit of the death penalty in this case. But the severity Tsarnaev’s crimes place him in that narrow category of criminals for whom death is a proportional punishment.”
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