The Justice Department will seek the restoration of the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was found guilty of orchestrating the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, Attorney General William Barr said Thursday.
In an interview with The Associated Press, he said the Justice Department is appealing the court's decision to overturn Tsarnaev's death sentence and a trial is scheduled to determine whether he should be executed for the attack that killed three people and injured more than 260 people. Barr added that the Justice Department will refer the case to the US Supreme Court.
“We will do whatever it takes. Barr said. «We will bring the case to the Supreme Court and continue to pursue the death penalty.»
Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlane detonated improvised bombs near the finish of the Boston Marathon in 2013. The attack killed three people and injured over 260.
A panel of judges at the First U.S. District Court in July found that the judge who oversaw the 2015 trial did not adequately ask potential jurors about what they had read or heard about the high-profile case.
The defense admitted that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev attacked on April 15, 2013, but insisted that the elder brother was the radical mastermind behind the attack — and forced the impressionable younger brother to commit an act of violence.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died in a shootout with the police. Hours later, police arrested a bloody and wounded Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the Boston suburb of Watertown, where he was hiding in a boat parked in his backyard.
Tsarnaev, now 27, was found guilty on all 30 charges against him, including conspiracy and use of weapons of mass destruction, and the murder of an MIT police officer during an escape attempt. The Court of Appeal upheld all but a few of his sentences.
Prosecutors told the jury that Tsarnaev was also guilty of an attack to «punish» the United States for participating in hostilities in Muslim countries. In the boat where he was found hiding, he wrote: «Stop killing innocents, and we will stop.»
Calling the media attention to the case «unprecedented in the history of American law,» the appellate court said US District Judge George O'Toole had failed to assemble an impartial jury.
Also, the court did not allow the defense to tell the jury about the evidence linking Tamerlan Tsarnaev to the murders of three people in the Boston suburb of Walt in 2011.
