Biden administration urges Supreme Court to reinstate death sentences for Boston Marathon bomber

Washington — The Justice Department is urging the Supreme Court to reinstate the death penalty sentences for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev that were invalidated by a lower court last year.

In a brief filed with the Supreme Court on Monday in the dispute between the federal government and Tsarnaev, Acting Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was wrong to vacate the capital sentences recommended by a federal jury "in one of the most important terrorism prosecutions in our nation's history" and called for the high court to reverse the lower court's decision. "[T]he jury carefully considered each of respondent's crimes and determined that capital punishment was warranted for the horrors that he personally inflicted — setting down a shrapnel bomb in a crowd and detonating it, killing a child and a promising young student, and consigning several others 'to a lifetime of unimaginable suffering,'" Prelogar wrote in the filing. "That determination by 12 conscientious jurors deserves respect and reinstatement by this court."