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The US Supreme Court has agreed to consider reinstating the death sentence for Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev after it was dismissed last year.
On Monday, the court Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from the government to review the decision to take away the death penalty, acting as a review of the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last year that the trial was tainted.
Tsarnaev, 27, was sentenced to death in 2015 after he was convicted of 30 charges relating to the bombing in 2013, but the verdict was overturned by the court in July 2020 over concerns with the jury selection process.
The three-judge panel on the court argued that the judge in Tsarnaev’s 2015 trial did not properly vet members of the jury over what they already knew about the highly publicised case.
Following the decision, the US Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to review the sentencing in October 2020, writing in its petition that Tsarnaev’s case is “one of the most important terrorism prosecutions in our nations history.”
The department claimed that the appeals court should not have ruled that Tsarnaev needed a new trial to determine whether he should receive the death penalty.
In the petition, acting solicitor general Jeffrey Wall, alongside other lawyers, told the Supreme Court: “Given the profound stakes … the First Circuit should not have the last word.”
They added that the Supreme Court should “put this landmark case back on track toward its just conclusion”.
Prosecutors asked the court to hear the case by June 2021, when the current term ends, “to avoid further delay in this long-running and critically important prosecution.”
The Associated Press reported at the time that if the Supreme Court justices refused to hear the case, then the prosecutors could stop pursuing capital punishment for Tsarnaev and instead agree to life in prison.
Government lawyers also told the court in October that if an alternative solution would be for the prosecutors to take the case to trial again, which would force victims to take the stand again.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died following a gunfight with police shortly after the bombing, while his brother was arrested by police and subsequently convicted of the 30 charges made against him.
The charges included, using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death, and malicious destruction of properties resulting in death. All but a few of the 30 charges were upheld in appeals court.
Defence attorney David Patton previously called the decision to overturn the death penalty as “straightforward and fair” and added that the prosecutors need to decide “whether to put the victims and Boston through a second trial, or to allow closure to this terrible tragedy by permitting a sentence of life without the possibility of release”.
While in August 2020, US attorney general William Barr told the AP that the department planned to take the case to the Supreme Court and would continue to “pursue the death penalty”. He added: “We will do whatever´s necessary.”
The Independent has contacted the Department of Justice for comment.
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