by Boston (AP) Attorneys for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev asked a federal court on Thursday to remove the judge presiding over the lengthy legal struggle over his death sentence, but the court dismissed their request.
The claim put forth by Tsarnaev’s attorneys that U.S. District Court Judge George O. Toole ought to be removed from the case due to his perceived lack of impartiality was dismissed by the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals. Tsarnaev’s lawyers cited what they claimed were remarks O Toole made regarding the case on podcasts and at public gatherings throughout the appeals process during a hearing in August 2024.
In a two-page ruling issued Thursday, the appeals court judges decided that O Toole should remain the case’s presider. They concluded that two panel discussions and a podcast in which O Toole covered a variety of topics related to planning intricate jury trials and the issues with social media in that context did not amount to grounds for his dismissal.
A phone message asking for comment was not immediately answered by David E. Patton, one of O Toole’s lawyers.
In March 2024, a federal appeals court directed O Toole to look into defense-made allegations of juror bias and decide whether Tsarnaev’s execution sentence should remain in effect. He was found guilty of aiding in the 2013 bombing near the finish line of the marathon, which left three people dead and hundreds injured.
When O Toole will make a decision about juror prejudice is unknown. The appeals court stated that he should revoke Tsarnaev’s sentence and begin a new penalty-phase hearing to decide whether or not Tsarnaev should receive the death penalty if he determines that jurors should have been disqualified.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tsarnaev’s death sentence in 2022 after the First Circuit overturned it in 2020. The circuit court concluded that the trial judge had not adequately questioned jurors regarding their exposure to the bombing’s widespread media coverage.
After Tsarnaev’s attorneys persuaded the 1st Circuit to look into problems the Supreme Court had overlooked, the court gave the case another look. Whether the trial judge improperly ordered the trial to take place in Boston and rejected defense appeals to the seating of two jurors who they said lied during interrogation were two of them.
The appeal did not question Tsarnaev’s responsibility for the bombing victims’ deaths. His attorneys have contended that Tsarnaev was influenced by his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed a few days after the bombing in a gunfight with police.
All thirty of the accusations against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were found to be true. The brothers, who are ethnic Chechens who immigrated to the United States from Russia over ten years ago, were presented by the prosecution as co-conspirators in a ruthless and heartless scheme to hold the United States accountable for its wars in Muslim nations.
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