A federal appeals court on Thursday ordered the judge who oversaw Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's trial to investigate the defense's claims of juror bias and determine whether his death sentence should stand. The Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals did not throw out Tsarnaev's death sentence, the AP reports. Defense lawyers had pushed for that while claiming bias by two people who sat on the jury that convicted him for his role in the bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds near the marathon's finish line in 2013.
But the appeals court found that the trial judge did not adequately probe Tsarnaev's claims of juror bias and sent the case back to the judge for a new investigation. If the judge finds that either person should have been disqualified, he should vacate Tsarnaev's death sentence and hold a new penalty-phase trial to determine whether Tsarnaev should be sentenced to death, the appeals court said. "And even then, we once again emphasize that the only question in any such proceeding will be whether Tsarnaev will face execution; regardless of the outcome, he will spend the rest of his life in prison," a three-judge panel of the appeals court said. The US attorney's office in Massachusetts and lawyers for Tsarnaev did not immediately comment.
The Justice Department can either ask the full 1st Circuit to hear the matter or go to the US Supreme Court, per the AP. Oral arguments before the three-judge 1st Circuit panel more than a year ago focused on two jurors Tsarnaev's lawyers say were dishonest during the jury selection process. One of them said she had not commented about the case online, while Tsarnaev's attorneys say she had retweeted a post calling Tsarnaev a "piece of garbage." Another juror said none of his Facebook friends had commented on the trial, though one had urged him to "play the part" so he could get on the jury and send Tsarnaev to "jail where he will be taken care of," defense attorneys say.
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