Supreme Court justices seemed generally sympathetic to Biden administration arguments on Oct. 13 that the death sentence of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be reinstated.
The hearing centered largely around alleged juror bias and evidence that Tsarnaev’s late older brother, Tamerlan, was involved in a jihad-related triple murder two years before the 2013 marathon bombing. The evidence was excluded from Tsarnaev’s original trial in federal court in Massachusetts. Tsarnaev’s lawyer argued that the brother influenced and indoctrinated him into supporting a jihad against the United States and that this factor was given short shrift during the sentencing phase.
