Originally published at: UPDATE: Boston Marathon Bomber Wants Death Penalty Overturned, Seeks Life in Prison | Sean Hannity
Lawyers representing the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber fought to overturn his death penalty Friday; arguing the jury pool was “composed of people already planning” capital punishment for his crime.
“Tszarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, set off pressure cooker bombs at the Marathon finish line on April 15, 2013, killing Martin Richard, an 8-year-old third-grader from Dorchester; Lingzi Lu, a 23-year-old Boston University graduate student from China; and Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager from Medford,” reports the Boston Globe.
“According to the defense, the jury that voted to sentence Tsarnaev to death in 2015 from drawn from a pool of people, nearly everyone of whom was familiar with the broad details of the terror attack. The defense said 99.7 potential jurors knew about the bombing,” adds the newspaper.
“Even if a juror honestly believes before trial that he or she can objectively hear the evidence, when a community has been aroused to a fever pitch the prospective juror may come to fear ‘return[ing] to neighbors’ with anything other than a guilty verdict and a death sentence,’’ his defense lawyers wrote.
“Before being seated, the foreperson of this capital jury had published an online post calling the defendant whom she later voted to sentence to death a ‘piece of garbage,’” they added. “Actual prejudice has been shown and reversal is required.”
Read the full report at the Boston Globe.
