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The U.S. Supreme Court is going to review the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for his participation in the bombing of the Boston Marathon in 2013. What’s at stake, and where does the case stand now?

“The first circuit has on the grounds that the trial judge didn’t question the jurors closely enough about their exposure to pretrial publicity, and because the trial judge excluded some evidence about Tsarnaev’s older brother, who was killed in a police shootout after the bombing,” former Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna told Seattle’s Morning News.

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“The issue here has been granted review by the Supreme Court. Now the Biden administration has to decide whether to pursue the death penalty or not,” McKenna said. “If they don’t — because it’s a new Department of Justice — the Supreme Court case would be mooted and the first circuit ruling would stand, although the U.S. attorney could still seek the death penalty by conducting a new death penalty trial with new jurors, so they would have to decide whether to do that or not, and that has impacts on witnesses, including victims of the bombing.”

The precedent of the Supreme Court case may relate to youth and eligibility for the death penalty, though the case is fact specific, McKenna says.

“I think this is very fact specific. Frankly, the Boston Marathon bombing was horrific. Three people died, 260 people were injured, 17 of them lost limbs,” he said. “But it does remind me of another case — reminds me of a case Washington state knows a lot about, which is the D.C. Beltway sniper case, because it involved two individuals from Washington state, John Muhammad and Lee Malvo.”

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“Malvo was 17 years old, and he was ineligible for the death penalty because of his age. And he’s serving consecutive life sentences,” McKenna said. “Tsarnaev was 20 years old, or just short of his 20th birthday. But nevertheless, he’s arguing, and has already from the beginning, that his brother intimidated him into participating in the bombing and that that is a mitigating factor, which should mean that he does not get the death penalty, although he said, ‘Yes, I was part of the bombing. I did it, and I’m willing to take responsibility.’ He wants to live out his life in prison and not be executed.”

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