Federal appeals court tosses Tsarnaev death sentence, orders new penalty-phase trial - The Boston Globe

In a ruling that sent shock waves across Boston, a federal appeals court on Friday overturned the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted five years ago of working with his brother to plant two bombs near the Boston Marathon’s finish line, and ordered a new trial to determine whether he should be put to death.

In a 224-page ruling that infuriated some victims, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that George A.

O’Toole Jr., the judge in Tsarnaev’s 2015 trial, “did not meet the standard” of fairness while presiding over jury selection.

The court found that at least two of the 12 jurors did not fully disclose what they knew about the high-profile case or discussed it on social media before they were chosen to decide Tsarnaev’s fate.

Indeed, Tsarnaev’s trial attorneys showed during the end-stages of the jury selection process that one of the jurors, the foreperson, hid that she had posted on Twitter about being “locked down” during the manhunt for Tsarnaev, and that she called him a “piece of garbage” after the attacks.

The court held that O’Toole Jr.

“A judge cannot delegate to potential jurors the work of judging their own impartiality,” Thompson wrote.

She said she was not sure whether she would return to court to try to persuade another judge to reimpose the death penalty.

He referred the Globe to an essay he and his wife, Denise, wrote shortly before Tsarnaev was sentenced to death, in which they called for his life to be spared.

They added: “We know that the government has its reasons for seeking the death penalty, but the continued pursuit of that punishment could bring years of appeals and prolong reliving the most painful day of our lives.

Tsarnaev, now 27, was sentenced to death in 2015.

In challenging his death sentence, lawyers for Tsarnaev had argued that holding the trial in the city that endured the terrorist attack deprived him of his right to an impartial jury.

Nancy Gertner, a former federal district court judge who now teaches criminal law at Harvard Law School, said “the notion that a jury from Boston could fairly judge someone who made us all vulnerable seemed to me to be absurd.”.

“In a case like this, a judge must conduct a very searching and robust jury selection process to ensure that potential jurors haven’t been tainted by negative pretrial publicity,” said Daniel S.

“And Judge O’Toole cut the defense off at the pass at times, when it sought to do a deeper dive into what specifically prospective readers may have read or heard about the case.

The defense had argued at trial that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was led in the marathon plot by his domineering, violent older brother; prosecutors contended that younger brother was a willing participant who became radicalized on his own.

The ruling also suggested jurors should have been told about older brother’s alleged involvement in a 2011 triple murder in Waltham.

“If the judge had admitted this evidence, the jurors would have learned that Dzhokhar knew by the fall of 2012 that Tamerlan had killed the drug dealers in the name of jihad,” the decision read.

In response to the ruling, Governor Charlie Baker, who supported the decision to impose the death penalty,” said in a statement: “The Boston Marathon bombing was an act of terrorism that devastated families and residents across the Commonwealth and beyond.

Bloom, a professor of law at Boston College Law School, cited the essay in The Boston Globe by the Richards — whose daughter, then age 7, lost a leg during the attack — that called for Tsarnaev to be sentenced to life in prison