Attorneys for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev want the terrorist’s conviction overturned, based on their claim that he was judged unfairly because the trial took place in Boston.
Tsarnaev, who was captured shortly after he and his brother Tamerlan set off several bombs among crowds at the 2013 Boston Marathon, was quickly put on trial in a Boston court, and by 2015 was found guilty, and sentenced to death.
But now, the 26-year-old’s legal team is filing an appeal to the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the sentence claiming that the jury in Tsarnaev’s trial was hopelessly tainted because the trial was held in Boston, the very town that suffered the devastating attack, CNN reported.
Tsarnaev’s defense team is also expected to claim that some jurors lied to hide their bias against their client. The attorneys point to at least one juror who called Tsarnaev a “piece of garbage” on social media and supposedly lied about being forced to “shelter in place” during the five-day manhunt that ensued after the April 2013 bombing. They also detail a second juror who started a social media group to discuss the case.
“Fresh proceedings – in an unaffected community, before honest and unbiased jurors, who know that the bombings were [Dzhokar’s] first violent crimes but not Tamerlan’s – present a real prospect of a different outcome,” the paperwork reads.
“This verdict is unworthy of confidence, and this Court should reverse,” Tsarnaev’s lawyers conclude.
Tsarnaev’s brother, Tamerlan, was killed during the manhunt. The then 19-year-old Tsarnaev was tracked down and taken into custody, but not before the brothers killed Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, Sean Collier.
However, prosecutors have already addressed the arguments put forth by the defense. They say the facts and testimony outweighed any previous media coverage the jurors could have seen. Prosecutors also said that none of the jurors were dishonest during the jury selection process.
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