The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to reinstated the death sentence for convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, rejecting claims that his jury should been told about his accomplice brother's influence on him.
Voting along conservative-liberal lines on Friday, the court agreed with the Biden administration's arguments that a federal appeals court was wrong to throw out the sentence of death a jury imposed on Tsarnaev, 28, for his role in the bombing that killed three people near the finish line of the marathon in 2013.
'Dzhokhar 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.'
The First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled in 2020 that the trial judge improperly excluded evidence that could have shown Tsarnaev was deeply influenced by his older brother, Tamerlan, and was somehow less responsible for the carnage.
The appeals court also faulted the judge for not sufficiently questioning jurors about their exposure to extensive news coverage of the bombing.
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