Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death after being found guilty of killing 3 people in a bomb attack.
Washington:
US President Donald Trump on Sunday demanded that Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev be sentenced to death again after an appeals court overturned the death penalty.
“Rarely has anyone deserved the death penalty more than Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev,” Trump tweeted.
“So many lives lost and ruined. The federal government must once again call for the death penalty in a resumption of the initial trial. Our country cannot leave the decision on appeal,” he added.
Tsarnaev, 27, was sentenced to death in 2015 for planting two homemade bombs near the race finish line in 2013, killing three people and injuring 264 others.
He admitted to carrying out the attack at the age of 19 with his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died four days after the atrocity during a shootout with the police.
Citing in particular issues of neutrality in the jury selection process, a Massachusetts federal appeals court upheld most of Tsarnaev’s convictions on Friday, but instructed a district court to hold a new criminal trial to determine his fate for crimes punishable by death.
Regardless of the outcome of the retrial, Tsarnaev will remain “confined in prison for the rest of his life,” the three appeals judges said.
Lawyers for Tsarnaev, an American citizen who came to the United States from the former Soviet Union as a child, have always claimed that his brother was the more guilty of the two, claiming that Dzhokhar had no history of violence.
Trump has consistently called for an increased use of the death penalty and, with the Nov. 3 election approaching – in which Trump is seeking a second White House term – his administration appears determined to proceed with a record number of federal executions. .
Federal death penalty cases are rare in the United States, although three inmates were executed this month after Trump ordered federal executions to resume after a 17-year hiatus.
A fourth is scheduled for the end of next month.
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
