Prosecutors won’t challenge Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s appeal case
Prosecutors have announced that they won’t challenge a federal appeals court ruling regarding possible juror bias in the death penalty case of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Defense lawyers for Tsarnaev are fighting to get his death penalty sentence overturned, arguing bias over questionable social media posts made by two people who sat on the jury that convicted him for his role in the bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds near the marathon’s finish line in 2013.
The appeals court recently ordered the judge who oversaw Tsarnaev’s trial to investigate the defense’s claims of juror bias and determine whether his death sentence should stand. Prosecutors are now agreeing to take a second look.
“This letter is to inform the Court that the government will not be seeking panel rehearing or rehearing en banc (on the bench) of the decision of this case,” the U.S. District Attorney’s Office wrote in a letter to the U.S. Appeal Court.
There is no chance Tsarnaev will be freed from prison, but his sentence can end up changing to life without parole instead of death.
Defense lawyers have also argued that Tsarnaev had fallen under the influence of his older brother, Tamerlan, who died in a gun battle with police after the bombing.
Tsarnaev was convicted of all 30 charges against him, including conspiracy and use of a weapon of mass destruction and the killing of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Officer Sean Collier.
Lingzi Lu, a 23-year-old Boston University graduate student from China, Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager from Medford, and 8-year-old Martin Richard, of Boston, all died in the bombing.
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