This past Tuesday, the attorney representing the remaining Boston Marathon bomber pressed a federal court to step up and overturn his client’s death sentence due to juror misconduct throughout the trial.
Both the Boston bomber and his brother were responsible for the deaths of three people and the injuries of hundreds more in the wake of setting off a pair of bombs that had been planted next to the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 2013. The bomber’s brother died as part of a shootout with the police, but the survivor of the pair ended up being tracked down and taken into police custody.
Daniel Habib, the person representing the Boston Marathon bomber, is now pushing a federal appeals court to step in and turn a 180 on the original death sentence handed down by a federal jury back in 2015 and then imposed once again by the Supreme Court last year. Habib stated to the First Circuit Court of Appeals that the sentence for his client should be altered because of a number of issues that had not been considered by the Supreme Court regarding its March 2022 ruling, such as a pair of jurors allegedly lying during the process of jury selection, as reported by the Associated Press.
Habib insisted that one of the jurors made the claim that they did not post on social media about the bomber, but had in fact shared a post labeling the defendant a “piece of garbage.” While in the same vein, another juror made the claim that non of his friends on Facebook had made posts about the trial, but one friend had asked the juror to just “play the part” to get on the jury and convict the defendant.
William Glaser, an attorney with the Justice Department did admit to a few inaccurate statements by a few of the jurors but stated that no evidence whatsoever suggests that the jurors were acting in bad faith.
“There is no indication in this record that the inaccuracies were the kind of knowing dishonesty that would lead to disqualification,” stated Glaser, according to the AP.
The First Circuit judges were seemingly going to entertain the argument from Habib. “Don’t we need to know why it was inaccurate before we know whether it was evidence of some bias or an innocent mistake?” expressed Judge William Kayatta, according to Reuters.
Back in a 2015 trial, the Boston Marathon bomber was officially convicted of 30 charges after his legal team made the bare minimum effort to defend him. The defense attorney openly admitted the guilt of his client to a number of the charges and only called up a total of four witnesses who ended up issuing a total of five hours of testimony. On the other hand, the Prosecution called in a total of 92 witnesses who collectively testified for 15 days.
