WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court said on Monday that it will consider restoring the death sentence for the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, presenting President Joe Biden with an initial test of his opposition to capital punishment.
Ministers agreed to hear an appeal from the Trump administration, which executed 13 federal inmates 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 autumn, and it is unclear how the new government will approach Tsarnaev’s case. The initial process and the decision to seek the death sentence were made by the Obama administration, of which Biden served as vice president.
Biden vowed to seek an end to the federal death penalty, but he said nothing about how he plans to do this.
In just over two months in office, the new government reversed its predecessor’s position in several higher court cases. But the Justice Department did not notify the court of any change in its position in the Tsarnaev case.
Even if the court reinstated the death penalty, nothing would force Biden to set an execution date.
In late July, the Boston federal appeals court rejected Tsarnaev’s sentence because, according to him, the judge at his trial did not do enough to ensure that the jury was not biased against him.
The Justice Department acted quickly to appeal, asking the judges to hear and decide the case until the end of the court’s current mandate in early summer. The then attorney general William Barr said last year: “We will do whatever is necessary.”
Tsarnaev’s lawyers acknowledged at the start of his trial that he and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, detonated the two bombs at the finish line of the marathon on April 15, 2013. But they argued that Dzhokar Tsarnaev is less guilty than his brother, that they said was the brain behind the attack.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died after a gunfight with the police and was run over by his brother while on the run. Police captured a bloody and wounded Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hours later in the Boston suburb of Watertown, where he was hiding in a boat parked in a backyard.
Tsarnaev, now 27, was convicted of all 30 charges against him, including conspiracy and the use of a weapon of mass destruction and the death of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer during the Tsarnaev brothers’ escape attempt. The appeals court upheld all but a few convictions.
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This story has been corrected to show that the federal appeals court rejected the sentence in late July, not in August.