Death Penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Anti-Execution State Brings Complications, Not Closure

A federal jury has sentenced 21yearold Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death by lethal injection for setting off bombs at the 2013 Boston Marathon that killed three and injured more than 260. The sentence was issued in Massachusetts, a state which has banned the death penalty since 1987 and has not carried out an execution since 1947. Polls show 85 percent of Bostonians oppose the death penalty for Tsarnaev, as well as 80 percent of Massachusetts residents. The jury in the case was "death qualified," meaning each member had to be open to considering the death penalty, and anyone who opposed it could not serve. Tsarnaev’s lawyers are now expected to appeal. The process could take more than a decade to finish. Since the federal death penalty was reinstated, just three federal prisoners have been executed, none since 2003. We host a roundtable with three guestsJames Rooney, president of Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty; Eric Freedman, professor of constitutional law at Hofstra Law School, who has worked on many death penalty cases; and Denny LeBoeuf, director of the ACLU’s John Adams Project, who has 26 years of experience as a capital defense attorney.

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