Even though he and his brother caused “battlefield-like carnage” when they bombed the Boston Marathon in 2013, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s death sentence must be vacated pending a new penalty-phase trial, a federal appeals court said Friday.
The ruling came from the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
“A core promise of our criminal-justice system is that even the very worst among us deserves to be fairly tried and lawfully punished,” wrote Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson for the court. The ruling found that the presiding judge in Tsarnaev’s 2015 trial “did not meet the standard” of fairness.
The 224-page ruling ordered a “new trial strictly limited to what penalty Dzhokhar should get on the death-eligible counts.”
A spokeswoman for US Attorney Andrew E. Lelling’s office said Friday afternoon that prosecutors were still reviewing the ruling and would have more to say in the coming weeks. Two of Tsarnaev’s appellate lawyers didn’t immediately return an e-mail seeking comment.
The judges said in the ruling, “just to be crystal clear … Dzhokhar will remain confined to prison for the rest of his life, with the only question remaining being whether the government will end his life by executing him.”
Thompson was joined on the three-judge panel by Judges Juan R. Torruella and William J. Kayatta Jr.
This is a breaking news story that will be updated.
Travis Andersen can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @TAGlobe.
