Less than two months after the annual March for Life celebrated the likelihood that the “pro-life” majority on the US Supreme Court would overturn the 1973 decision Roe v Wade that legalised abortion nationwide, that same court majority voted to reinstate the death penalty sentence against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of two brothers who carried out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing in which three people were killed.
The court ruled 6-3 to overturn a lower court ruling that had set aside the death penalty punishment because the trial judge had withheld key evidence from the jury. That evidence indicated that Tsarnaev, who was 19 years old at the time of the bombing, was not the mastermind of the plot, but was coerced by his older brother Tamerlan.
Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said: “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev committed heinous crimes. The Sixth Amendment nonetheless guaranteed him a fair trial before an impartial jury. He received one.”
Justice Stephen Breyer, wrote in his dissent: “Three courts including this Court have now examined this record with care. Why? Why are appellate courts so deeply involved in what is, after all, a trial-based evidentiary matter? The reason, in my view, lies in part in the nature of the underlying proceeding. It is a death penalty proceeding. And where death is at stake, the courts (and Congress) believe that particular judicial care is required.” He noted that he had previously argued that death penalty cases have “inherent” problems and that the current case “provides just one more example of some of those problems”.
Sr Helen Prejean, a noted advocate for abolishing the death penalty, met with Tsarnaev during his trial and testified on his behalf. She told the jury that he showed genuine regret about the suffering he inflicted on his victims. “He said emphatically, 'No one deserves to suffer like they did,’” she told the jury.
It is unclear whether the death sentence will be carried out. Last year, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a moratorium on federal executions. The federal government had not executed anyone in 17 years when the Trump administration resumed executions resulting in 13 executions during the last six months of Trump’s term in office.
Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, director of the Catholic Mobilising Network, said that executing Tsarnaev “would bring little healing to those he harmed and would serve only as state-sponsored vengeance.”
Vallaincout Murphy also urged the state of Texas to commute the sentence of Melissa Lucio, a 53-year-old woman set to be executed next month. “To do anything else would be an irreversible injustice,” Valliancourt Murphy said.
Lucio was convicted of killing one of her 2-year-old daughter Mariah in 2007, but Lucio’s attorneys argue she was coerced into confessing to killing the child. They maintain the child accidentally fell down the stairs.
“One tragedy is not somehow made better by killing someone else. Justice is not suddenly restored because another person dies,” Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville said. “Executing Melissa will not bring peace to her surviving children, it will only bring more pain and suffering.” The bishop said the judicial system that imposes the death penalty “is a deeply flawed process rife with human error and inconsistency.”
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