- The Supreme Court reinstated Boston Bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev's death sentence on Friday in a 6-3 decision.
- It's unclear if Tsarnaev, 28, will actually face execution.
The Supreme Court ruled on Friday to reinstate the death sentence for the
The 6-3 decision overturned a federal appeal to
"Dzhokhar Tsarnaev committed heinous crimes," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the court's opinion.
"The Sixth Amendment nonetheless guaranteed him a fair trial before an impartial jury. He received one," Thomas said. "The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit is reversed."
Tsarnaev was charged with assisting his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in planting pressure-cooker bombs at the finish line of the April 2013 Boston Marathon. The bombs killed three people, and injured more than 200 others.
In July 2020, a federal appeals court overturned Tsarnaev's death sentence, ruling that jurors weren't questioned enough to vet potential biases and that the judge should have allowed Tsarnaev's lawyers to present evidence in the penalty-phrase of the trial, referencing his older brother's possible involvement in a 2011 triple homicide.
Tsarnaev's lawyers wanted to include this information as part of their argument that Tamerlan was the mastermind of the attack, and that Dzokhar was more of a follower and therefore his actions didn't rise to the level of the death penalty.
When the case was argued in front of the Supreme Court in October, the conservative justices seemed to agree with Deputy Solicitor General Eric Feigin's argument that the evidence relating to the 2011 homicides was "unreliable heresay."
It's still unclear whether Tsarnaev will face the death penalty, as the Biden administration imposed a moratorium on federal executions in July.
Though Biden has said he opposes the federal government's use of the death penalty, his administration took the same position as the Trump administration in defending Tsarnaev's death penalty.
Survivors and victims family members have been split over the years about whether Tsarnaev should face execution for his crimes.Bill and Denise Richard, who lost their 8-year-old son Martin in the bombings, wrote a 2015 op-ed for The Boston Globe, saying that the government's push for the death penalty would only bring them more pain as the case goes though "years of appeals."
Survivor Mikey Borgard told CNN in October that he found the death penalty "barbaric" and "cannot bear the thought of a human life extinguished on my behalf."
Liz Norden, whose two adult sons lost their right legs in the attack, told Reuters in October that she has always supported the death penalty for Tsarnaev.
"If this doesn't warrant the death penalty, what does?" she asked.