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WASHINGTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — The U.S. Supreme Court is reinstating the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the men behind the bombings at the Boston Marathon in 2013.
A federal appeals court had previously thrown out the sentence in 2020 after ruling that the trial judge improperly excluded evidence that could have shown Tsarnaev was deeply influenced by his brother, Tamerlan.
The defense also said the jurors were not properly questioned about their exposure to news coverage surrounding the Boston Marathon bombing.
The Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 in favor of reinstating the death penalty. The ruling was made along ideological lines.
"Dzhokhar Tsarnaev committed heinous crimes. The Sixth Amendment nonetheless guaranteed him a fair trial before an impartial jury. He received one," Justice Roberts wrote in the opinion.
Suffolk University Law Professor Rosanna Cavallaro told WBZ's Drew Moholland she was surprised by the court's decision.
"Usually the court closer to the proceedings has the best view of what that process was like," Cavallaro said. "For the Supreme Court to say all these problems that the first circuit was concerned about enough to reverse a high profile verdict are not problems at all is a little worrying."
Cavallaro did acknowledge that going through the trial again could have been hard for many people in the area.
"The prospect of having to go through this trial again would have been deeply traumatic for so many people in Boston," she said.
WBZ's Drew Moholland (@DrewWBZ) reports.
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