Supreme Court reinstates Boston marathon bomber death sentence
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The Supreme Court on Friday reinstated the death penalty for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
In a 6-3 decision that broke along familiar ideological lines, the court’s conservative majority sided with the Justice Department’s argument that a lower court erred when it vacated the death sentence Tsarnaev received after being found guilty of perpetrating the 2013 attack.
“Dzohkhar Tsarnaev committed heinous crimes,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority. “The Sixth Amendment nonetheless guaranteed him a fair trial before an impartial jury. He received one.”
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The court’s three liberals dissented in an opinion authored by Justice Stephen Breyer that was joined in large part by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. They expressed their view that Tsarnaev had been wrongly blocked during his sentencing phase from introducing evidence that he was coerced by his older brother into participating in the attack.
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