On Wednesday, October 13, 2021, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments about reinstating the Boston Marathon bomber’s death sentence. In 2013, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his now deceased older brother planted bombs in Boston on the day of the Boston Marathon. They killed three people, including an eight-year-old child, and wounded more than 260 others. Tsarnaev was later convicted and sentenced to death, but a Court of Appeals overturned his death sentence.

Despite President Biden’s goal of eliminating capital punishment at the federal level, the Biden administration caried out the appeal that had been started by the Trump Administration. The appeal attempts to have the death penalty re-instated. Supreme Court watchers believe that the conservative Court is leaning towards re-instating the death penalty for Tsarnaev, who is now 28 years of age and was 19 at the time of the attack. Tsarnaev has maintained that he played a secondary role and that his brother, Tamerlan was an “authority figure”.

It seems that if terrorists who, secretly plant bombs along a marathon racecourse that ultimately explode and kill three and maim hundreds are not eligible for a death penalty sentence, then the question becomes: who is? Generally speaking, murder that is planned, intentional and premeditated may subject one to a death penalty that ultimately is decided by a jury who can also choose life imprisonment. In this case, a Boston jury in a State that is politically liberal, determined that Tsarnaev should face the death penalty. If the highest Court in the land under these circumstances determines that the death penalty is not appropriate for this defendant, then it appears that the death penalty itself is dead.

If you need legal representation, we at Davis and Davis are here to help, just give us a call!”  

“Representing the people of Southwestern Pennsylvania since 1976”