With our correspondent in Houston, Thomas Harms
Sayfullo Saipov had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State group and never expressed remorse after the murder of five Argentinians, two Americans and a Belgian. This Monday during a second federal trial, the jurors must decide on his sentence: life imprisonment or the death penalty.
After the fact, then-President Donald Trump and the Department of Justice called for the death penalty.
Today the administration has changed. Yet Justice Minister Merrick Garland did not oppose the request for the death penalty against Saipov.
Surprising when you know that Joe Biden had defended during his presidential campaign, the abolition of capital punishment at the federal level.
According to some observers, it is linked to the terrorist characterization of the case. a terrorist, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 who had been sentenced to life in prison. The Supreme Court changed his sentence to a death sentence last March.
However, Djokhar Tsarnaev, like Sayfullo Saipov, if sentenced to death, cannot be executed under a moratorium on federal executions reinstated in 2021 by the Biden administration.
