BOSTON (AP) — A federal appeals court on Thursday ordered Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s case to be returned to a lower court to probe claims of juror bias and determine whether his death sentence should stand.
A federal appeals court on Thursday ordered Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s case to be returned to a lower court to probe claims of juror bias and determine whether his death sentence should stand.
The ruling from the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals keeps intact Tsarnaev’s death sentence for now. But the judges found that further investigation is needed to determine whether two jurors should have been stricken for biases.
If the lower court’s investigation reveals either person should have been disqualified, the court should vacate Tsarnaev’s death sentence and hold a new penalty-phase trial to determine whether he should sentenced to death, the judges said.
„And even then, we once again emphasize that the only question in any such proceeding will be whether Tsarnaev will face execution; regardless of the outcome, he will spend the rest of his life in prison,“ the court said.
The U.S. attorneys office in Massachusetts and lawyers for Tsarnaev didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment on the decision.
The Boston-based appeals court issued its ruling more than two years after the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the sentence imposed on 30-year-old Tsarnaev for his role in the bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds near the marathon’s finish line in 2013.
