Three+ years after death sentencing, lawyers for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have "flagged roughly 30 issues" for his appeal
It seems like it has been a long time since I blogged by the Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. And indeed it has been: a jury handed down Tsarnaev death sentence back in May 2015, a full month before Donald Trump had even announced he was running for President. But now more than three years after his death sentencing, Tsarnaev is in the news via this Boston Globe story headlined "Lawyer for Boston Marathon bomber maps out appeal of death penalty sentence." Here are excerpts:
Lawyers for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have flagged roughly 30 issues they plan to raise when he appeals his death sentence, according to a recent legal filing. A motion filed last week with the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston said the attorneys have “identified approximately 30 appellate claims to consider raising in Mr. Tsarnaev’s [appellate] brief.”
Tsarnaev’s lawyers requested that the Aug. 20 deadline for filing their highly anticipated brief be pushed back to Nov. 18, citing their ongoing analysis of some 10,000 pages of transcripts in the case. “Even relative to other federal capital appeals and terrorism appeals across the country, the record here is voluminous,” David Patton, a member of Tsarnaev’s appellate team, wrote in the motion.
Tsarnaev, 25, was convicted in 2015 for his role in the April 2013 Marathon bombings, which killed three people including an 8-year-old boy and wounded more than 260 others. He was sentenced to death and is currently incarcerated at a federal supermax prison in Colorado. Tsarnaev and his older brother and accomplice, Tamerlan, also killed an MIT police officer while they were on the run. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a confrontation with police in Watertown days after the bombings....
Patton listed additional issues that Tsarnaev’s team expects to raise on appeal. “Counsel have completed drafts of a substantial portion of the remaining claims, including issues concerning venue, multiple errors in the selection of the death-qualified jury, the admission of evidence obtained through the use of Mr. Tsarnaev’s involuntary confession, the lawfulness of certain counts of conviction . . . the exclusion of relevant mitigation material, improper prosecutorial arguments, and the admission of victim impact evidence from survivors,” Patton wrote. “But, despite continuous effort, a number of issues identified and determined to be sufficiently weighty for inclusion remain to be drafted.”
I would expect the First Circuit to give Tsarnaev's lawyers into the fall to complete their brief, and I would also guess the feds will need at least a few extra months to complete a response. Consequently, the First Circuit argument in the case will surely be heard no sooner than 2019, and I would not expect an opinion from the First Circuit until probably early 2020. Then surely comes en banc petition, a cert petition and likely at least one 2255 motion.
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