Breaking: Supreme Court Upholds Death Sentence for Boston Marathon Bomber

The Supreme Court decided on a 6–3 vote for the death sentence for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

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The Supreme Court decided to uphold the death sentence for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the brothers involved in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing on Friday. The decision was 6–3.

The Friday decision reversed a lower court decision from 2015 that ruled Tsarnaev would sit in prison for the rest of his life instead of pursuing a death sentence.

“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.”

In Tsarnaev, Justices Barrett and Gorsuch write separately to call into question whether courts of appeals (as opposed to #SCOTUS) have “supervisory power” to impose procedural rules on district courts.

This would be a big — if really nerdy — deal far beyond death penalty cases: pic.twitter.com/ZinArFfKOz

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) March 4, 2022

Tsarnaev was convicted in 2015 for the deaths of Krystle Campbell, Martin Richard and Lingzi Lu at the marathon, as well as Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, who was shot and killed several days later. On top of that, hundreds of people were injured from the two bombs. 

Tsarnaev’s brother Tamerlan, who was also involved in the attack, died after being shot multiple times during a confrontation with police. Tsarnaev has remained in federal prison in Florence, Colo., following his 2015 sentencing.