Boston Marathon bomber’s lawyers want death sentence tossed

BOSTON — Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s convictions or death sentence should be tossed because it was impossible for him to get a fair trial in the same city where the shrapnel-packed, pressure cooker bombs exploded, his lawyers told a federal appeals court on Thursday.

In a 500-page brief filed in the 1st U.S. District Court of Appeals, Tsarnaev’s legal team outlined a host of other problems with his 2015 trial, during which the defense admitted from the outset that he and his older brother carried out the attack. His appellate lawyers are also pointing to issues with jurors, certain testimony from surviving victims and the defense’s inability to tell jurors about links between Tsarnaev’s brother and a 2011 unsolved triple killing.

His lawyers argue the trial court judge’s “first fundamental error” was denying the defense’s repeated requests to move the case out of a city that was “traumatized by the bombings, ordered to shelter in place during the manhunt, saturated by prejudicial publicity and united in the Boston Strong movement.”

“This case should not have been tried in Boston,” the attorneys wrote.

Tsarnaev was sentenced to death just over two years after he and his brother set off bombs near the Boston Marathon’s finish line on April 15, 2013, killing three people and wounding more than 260. He was convicted of all 30 charges.

Tsarnaev admitted at his sentencing that he committed the attack– saying “If there’s any lingering doubt about that, let there be no more” — and apologized to victims and their loved ones. The defense sought to portray him as an impressionable teenager lured by his brother into participating in the deadly plot.

Tsarnaev, now 25, is behind bars at the supermax prison in Florence, Colo. His 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, died in a gunbattle with police a few days after the bombing.