A huge Supreme Court ruling came down to reinstate the potential for a death sentence to be handed down to the surviving Boston Marathon bomber. The Justices voted 6-3 to reinstate the death sentence for the terrorist.

An earlier court’s ruling was tossed out that jurors should have been informed of the role his brother played as an accomplice. The defendant, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, committed the April 2013 terror attack at the Boston Marathon.

The terror attack occurred towards the finish line of the Boston Marathon where the two brothers placed homemade bombs make out of pressure cookers into backpacks.

The attack killed three and severely injured 255. Writing the opinion of the court, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote “The Sixth Amendment nonetheless guaranteed him a fair trial before an impartial jury. He received one.”

Daily Mail reports:

The First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled in 2020 that the trial judge improperly excluded evidence that could have shown Tsarnaev was deeply influenced by his older brother, Tamerlan, and was somehow less responsible for the carnage. Tamerlan was shot dead by cops in the Boston suburb of Watertown four days after the terror attack.

The appeals court also faulted the judge for not sufficiently questioning jurors about their exposure to extensive news coverage of the bombing, but the Supreme Court has now ruled that this was a moot point. 

Three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Stephen Breyer writing when “death is at stake…particular judicial care” is required. “In my view, the Court of Appeals acted lawfully in holding that the District Court should have allowed Dzhokhar to introduce this evidence,” Breyer wrote.

Daniel Habib, a lawyer for Tsarnaev, declined to comment about the ruling. Tsarnaev was found guilty in 2015 for the deaths of Lingzi Lu, a 23-year-old Boston University graduate student from China; Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager from Medford, Massachusetts; and 8-year-old Martin Richard, of Boston.