Dzhokhar Tsarnaev case returns to court over allegations of jury bias – NBC Boston

The case of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is scheduled to return to court in Boston on Wednesday as a judge examines defense claims that the jury was biased.

U.S. District Judge George A. O'Toole Jr., who presided over Tsarnaev's 2015 trial, was ordered in March by a three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston to conduct a new investigation into possible bias by two jurors. Tsarnaev was sentenced to death for his role in the bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds near the marathon finish line in 2013 and remains in a maximum-security federal prison in Colorado.

If the judge concludes that one of the jurors should have been disqualified, the appeals court said he should overturn Tsarnaev's conviction and schedule a new sentencing hearing to decide whether Tsarnaev should be sentenced to death.

According to the Boston Globe, O'Toole is scheduled to meet with the defense team and prosecutors at a status conference on Monday, scheduled for 11 a.m. in Moakley federal court in Boston, to discuss “scheduling and other issues related to his investigation.” Tsarnaev is not expected to attend.

This is just the latest twist in the long-running case, which has already been heard once before the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court reinstated the death sentence imposed on 31-year-old Tsarnaev in 2022 after the 1st Circuit Court overturned the ruling in 2020. The district court found at the time that the trial judge had not adequately questioned jurors about their knowledge of the extensive news coverage of the bombing. Supreme Court justices voted 6-3 in favor in 2022, ruling that the 1st Circuit Court's decision was wrong.

The 1st Circuit revisited the case after Tsarnaev's lawyers pushed to consider issues the Supreme Court had not considered, including whether the trial judge had wrongly ordered the trial moved to Boston and had wrongly rejected defense objections to the seating of two jurors who had lied during questioning.

Years after Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death for his role in the Boston Marathon bombings, a ruling calls for a jury review.

The Justice Department continues to push to uphold the death sentence in Tsarnaev's case despite a moratorium on federal executions imposed by Attorney General Merrick Garland. The moratorium came after former President Donald Trump's administration executed 13 inmates in its final six months.

Oral arguments before the three-judge panel of the First District Court over a year ago focused on two jurors who Tsarnaev's lawyers said were dishonest during the lengthy jury selection process.

One of them said she had not commented on the case online but retweeted a post calling Tsarnaev a “piece of scum.” Another juror said none of his Facebook friends had commented on the trial, although one urged him to “play the part” so he could get on the jury and send Tsarnaev to “jail where he will be taken care of,” defense attorneys say. Tsarnaev's lawyers raised those concerns during jury selection, but the judge decided not to pursue them.

For the first time, we hear radio messages from the moment authorities found Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hiding in a boat in Watertown.

William Glaser, a Justice Department lawyer, acknowledged during oral arguments in the 1st District Court of Appeals that the jurors gave inaccurate testimony, but said other statements suggested they misremembered rather than lied. He argued that the trial judge did nothing wrong.

The appeals court said there may have been “harmless” explanations for the jurors' behavior, such as forgetting their social media posts or misunderstanding the judge's questions. But the trial judge's “error was that he did not conduct sufficient inquiry to rule out the more damaging explanations,” the appeals court said.

The appeals court voted 2-1 to send the case back to the appellate court for further jury consideration. Supporting the idea were Judges William Kayatta Jr. and O. Rogeriee Thompson, both nominated to the court by President Barack Obama.

Judge Jeffrey Howard, nominated by George W. Bush, disagreed, writing that there was “sufficient basis for the district court to find that the two jurors in question were not unduly biased.”

Tsarnaev's culpability in the deaths of Lingzi Lu, a 23-year-old Chinese graduate student at Boston University, Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager from Medford, Massachusetts, and 8-year-old Martin Richard of Boston was not at issue in the appeal, only whether he should be sentenced to death or life in prison.

Defense attorneys argued that Tsarnaev had succumbed to the influence of his older brother Tamerlan, who was killed in a shootout with police days after the April 15, 2013, bombing.

Tsarnaev was found guilty on all 30 charges against him, including conspiracy and use of a weapon of mass destruction, as well as the killing of Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier during the Tsarnaev brothers' escape attempt.

Prosecutors told jurors the men carried out the attack to punish the United States for its wars in Muslim countries. In the boat where Tsarnaev was found hiding, he had scribbled a confession referring to the wars, writing in part: “Stop killing our innocent people and we will stop.”