US President Donald Trump has said that Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whose 2015 death sentence was overturned by the US Appeals Court this week, must face capital punishment.
“Death penalty! He killed and badly wounded many. Justice!” Trump, who previously blasted the appellate court’s decision as “ridiculous,” tweeted on Saturday.
Death penalty! He killed and badly wounded many. Justice! https://t.co/WM9Vw26a21
Tsarnaev, who helped to carry out the 2013 bombing that took the lives of three people and injured over 260, was sentenced to death in 2015. However, his attorney successfully argued before the Appeals Court that the maximum punishment handed out to his client was the result of an unfair trial, claiming that the jury was biased against the attacker due to the attention the high-profile case received in the media.
Arguably the most notorious coverage of the worst US domestic terrorist attack since 9/11 came from Rolling Stone magazine, which put Tsarnaev on the cover, sparking huge blowback across the nation.
Tsarnaev now faces another trial to determine whether he will be executed or will be confined to his prison cell for the rest of his days.
“Just to be crystal clear. Dzhokhar will remain confined to prison for the rest of his life, with the only question remaining being whether the government will end his life by executing him,” the court wrote after announcing the decision on Thursday.
On Friday, Trump had already lashed out at the appellate court’s ruling to send Tsarnaev’s case back to a lower court for a retrial, expressing concern that the litigation might drag on for years.
“So they’ll argue about that for a long time. It’s ridiculous. Think of that. It’s ridiculous,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Florida.
During interrogation by police, Tsarnaev, who was 19 at the time of the attack he plotted and carried out with his older brother, Tamerlan, said that the marathon bombing was supposed to be the first in a wave of attacks.
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