The US Department of Justice will ask the Supreme Court to reconsider the overturning of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s death sentence for the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, as requested by Donald Trump in early August.
• Read also: Trump is demanding the death penalty for the perpetrator of the Boston Marathon bombing
• Read also: The death sentence of the perpetrator of the Boston bombing was overturned
“After long deliberations, and taking into account the opinion of the many victims of this case, the Ministry of Justice will ask the Supreme Court to reconsider the decision of the court of appeal to quash the death sentence Mr. Tsarnaev, Massachusetts Federal Attorney Andrew Lelling said in a statement Monday evening.
“Our hope is that this will lead to the reinstatement of the original sentence and avoid a new trial of the party concerning the death penalty,” he added.
On July 31, a Boston appeals court overturned this death sentence, and referred the case to the appropriate court to decide on a new sentence.
The judges of this court had notably accepted the defense argument that the jury selection process had been flawed. They had stressed that Djokhar Tsarnaev would remain sentenced, at a minimum, to life imprisonment.
But Donald Trump had criticized their decision, believing that “the death penalty had rarely been as deserved” as for Mr. Tsarnaev.
“The federal government must again call for the death penalty (…) our country cannot leave the appeal decision in force,” he tweeted.
A student of Chechen origin, Djokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death in June 2015 for having planted, with his older brother, Tamerlane, two homemade bombs near the finish line of the Boston marathon, killing three and injuring 264.
His defense has always claimed that the young man, aged 19 at the time (27 today), was under the influence of his elder, killed by the police three days after the attack.
While on the run, the two brothers shot dead a policeman.
Donald Trump regularly calls for an increased use of the death penalty and with the approach of the November 3 election, his government seems determined to carry out a record number of federal executions.
Returning to a practice that had been interrupted for 17 years, the Republican government has already carried out three lethal injections in July, and more are planned by the end of September.
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