US top court weighs Boston Marathon bomber’s death sentence
Al Jazeera
US Supreme Court hears arguments in case on death penalty for convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
The United States’s top court will decide whether to reinstate the death penalty for convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, as the Supreme Court heard arguments from US prosecutors and defence lawyers on Wednesday.
Tsarnaev was convicted six years ago for his role in the 2013 attack, which killed three people and wounded more than 260 others. He was sentenced to both life imprisonment and capital punishment.
But his lawyers won an appeal of the death sentence on grounds that jurors had not sufficiently heard arguments about how Tsarnaev was deeply under the influence of his older brother Tamerlan, who was killed while fleeing the bombing. They also argued the jury had been swayed by dramatic media reports.
