Supreme Court reinstates death penalty for Boston bomber

Portrait of Djokhar Tsarnaev during the reading of the verdict in court in Boston, April 8, 2015. REUTERS / Jane Flavell Collins

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The United States Supreme Court on Friday reinstated the death penalty for one of the two perpetrators of the deadly 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that left three people dead and more than 260 injured.

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In 2013,

, a 19-year-old student of Chechen origin, and his older brother Tamerlan planted two pipe bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

The attack killed three people, including an eight-year-old child, and injured 264.

Identified by surveillance cameras, the two brothers had fled, killing a policeman during their run.

Three days after the attack, the eldest was shot dead during a confrontation with the police.

Djokhar Tsarnaev was found injured, hidden in a boat.

He had written on a wall that he wanted to avenge the Muslims killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

During his trial in 2015 in Boston, his lawyers claimed that the young man was under the influence of his self-radicalized elder.

Without denying the seriousness of the facts, they had pleaded for life imprisonment.

The jurors were unconvinced and opted for the death penalty.

In 2020, a federal appeals court upheld the guilty verdict, but overturned the death sentence citing two irregularities.

One concerns the selection of the jury which, according to the court of appeal, had not been carried out with sufficient care to ensure that the jurors had not been influenced by the wide media coverage of the case.

Moreover, according to these same judges, the court of first instance had been wrong to reject a request from the defense which wanted to evoke a triple murder dating back to 2011, probably committed by the eldest of the Tsarnaevs, as proof of his character as a leader.

These procedural flaws were therefore not upheld by the Supreme Court.

She issued a split decision that matches her current fault line, six conservatives against three liberals, reports our correspondent in Washington,

.

Justice Clarence Thomas writes the majority arguments.

He considers that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's right to a fair and impartial trial has therefore been respected.

The liberal judges believe that Tamarlan Tsarnaev's guilt in previous murders could have changed the jury's opinion if these elements had been retained.

Only one, on the other hand, expressed his doubts about the merits of the death penalty: Judge Stephen Breyer, who is soon to retire.

(

AFP)

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• Terrorism

• Justice