Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, death penalty overturned, new trial ordered, for now looks like free room and board in the slam for life

Tsarnaev charged: In April, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was charged with using a weapon of mass destruction for his role in the Boston Marathon bombings. The attacks killed three people and injured more than 260 others…FBI

A U.S. federal appeals court has overturned the death sentence of an ethnic Chechen and naturalized U.S. citizen convicted in a bombing at the 2013 Boston Marathon that killed three people. RFE/RL

The First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston on July 31 ordered a new trial to determine what penalty Tsarnaev should receive, finding that the judge who oversaw the case did not sufficiently vet jurors for biases.

A federal jury found Tsarnaev, 27, guilty of all 30 counts he faced and sentenced him to death in 2015 just over two years after he and his older brother set off two homemade pressure-cooker bombs near the Boston Marathon’s finish line on April 15, 2013. In addition to killing three people, the bombing injured more than 260 others.

Tsarnaev’s brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, died in a gunbattle with police a few days after the bombings.

All three judges on the panel agreed that the death sentence should be overturned. But Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson, who wrote the opinion, noted that Tsarnaev “will spend his remaining days locked up in prison, with the only matter remaining being whether he will die by execution.”

Tsarnaev’s lawyers have argued repeatedly that it was impossible for their client to get a fair trial in Boston, where the terrorist attack took place. They pushed to move the trial out of the city, arguing the pervasive media coverage and the number of people touched by the attack would taint the jury pool.

The judge disagreed, saying he believed a fair and impartial jury could be found.

Tsarnaev’s lawyers also pointed to social-media posts from two jurors suggesting they harbored strong opinions even before the trial started.

Tsarnaev admitted at his sentencing that he and his brother were guilty and he apologized.

“I am sorry for the lives I have taken, for the suffering that I have caused you, for the damage I have done, irreparable damage,” he said.

Tsarnaev currently is serving his sentence at a high-security prison in Florence, Colorado.

His lawyers acknowledged at the beginning of his trial that he and his brother set off the bombs but argued that Dzhokar Tsarnaev was less culpable than his brother, who they said was the mastermind behind the attack.

Prosecutors told jurors that the men carried out the attack to punish the United States for its wars in Muslim countries.

The mother of Krystle Campbell, who was killed in the attack, expressed outrage at the appeals court’s decision.

“It’s just terrible that he’s allowed to live his life. It’s unfair. He didn’t wake up one morning and decide to do what he did. He planned it out. He did a vicious, ugly thing,” Patricia Campbell told The Boston Globe.

FBI REPORT: On April 15, 2013, two pressure cooker bombs placed near the finish line of the Boston Marathon detonated within seconds of each other, killing three and injuring more than two hundred people. Law enforcement officials identified brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as primary suspects in the bombings. After an extensive search for the then- unidentified suspects, law enforcement officials encountered Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Watertown, Massachusetts. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was shot during the encounter and was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who fled the scene, was apprehended the following day and remains in federal custody.

A decade earlier, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev immigrated to the United States from Kyrgyzstan with their parents Anzor Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva. Anzor Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen, his wife Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, and their son Dzhokhar Tsarnaev arrived in the United States from Kyrgyzstan in 2002. They applied for and received an immigration benefit. The elder son, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and his sisters, Bella and Ailina Tsarnaeva, arrived in the United States in 2003 and also received an immigration benefit. In the years that followed, all six family members became Lawful Permanent Residents of the United States.

Two years before the Boston Marathon bombings, Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva came to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) based on information received from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). In March 2011, the FBI received information from the FSB alleging that Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva were adherents of radical Islam and that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was preparing to travel to Russia to join unspecified underground groups in Dagestan and Chechnya. The FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force in Boston (Boston JTTF) conducted an assessment of Tamerlan Tsarnaev to determine whether he posed a threat to national security and closed the assessment three months later having found no link or “nexus” to terrorism.

In September 2011, the FSB provided the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) information on Tamerlan Tsarnaev that was substantively identical to the information the FSB had provided to the FBI in March 2011. In October 2011, the CIA provided information obtained from the FSB to the the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) for watchlisting purposes, and to the FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of State for their information. Upon NCTC’s receipt of the information, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was added to the terrorist watchlist.

Three months later, Tamerlan Tsarnaev traveled to Russia, as the lead information stated he was preparing to do. However, Tsarnaev’s travel to Russia did not prompt additional investigative steps to determine whether he posed a threat to national security.

By April 19, 2013, after the Tsarnaev brothers were identified as suspects in the bombings, the FBI reviewed its records and determined that in early 2011 it had received lead information from the FSB about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, had conducted an assessment of him, and had closed the assessment after finding no link or “nexus” to terrorism. In the days that followed, Members of Congress asked questions of the Director of the FBI, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and other government officials about the handling of information concerning Tamerlan Tsarnaev prior to the bombings. The Intelligence Community Inspectors General Forum, with the support of the DNI, determined that the Inspectors General of the Intelligence Community, the CIA, the Department of Justice (DOJ), and DHS would conduct a coordinated review of the handling and sharing of information available to the U.S. government prior to the Boston Marathon bombings. The Inspectors General issued a public announcement of a coordinated, independent review on April 30, 2013.