The First Circuit Court of Appeals this week denied an effort by Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev to have the judge who presided over his trial removed from the case amid a lengthy battle over Tsarnaev’s death sentence.
Lawyers for Tsarnaev petitioned the First Circuit to recuse U.S. District Court Judge George O’Toole from his case based on claims of bias. They pointed to statements O’Toole made on two educational panels and a podcast and statements he made to jurors during the trial.
But a panel of judges from the appeals court determined that O’Toole’s comments about “various aspects of organizing complex jury trials and the problems associated with social media in that context” did not warrant his removal from the case.
One of O’Toole’s attorneys, David E. Patton, didn’t immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment from the Associated Press.
The federal appeals court in March 2024 ordered O’Toole to investigate claims of juror bias by the defense and to determine whether Tsarnaev’s death sentence should stand. He was convicted of helping carry out the 2013 bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds of others near the marathon’s finish line.
It’s unclear when O’Toole might rule on the juror bias issue. If he finds that jurors should have been disqualified, he should vacate Tsarnaev’s sentence and hold a new penalty-phase trial to determine if Tsarnaev should be sentenced to death, the appeals court said.
In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death sentence given to Tsarnaev after the 1st Circuit threw out the sentence in 2020. The circuit court found then that the trial judge did not sufficiently question jurors about their exposure to the extensive news coverage of the bombing.
The 1st Circuit took another look at the case after Tsarnaev’s lawyers urged it to examine issues the Supreme Court didn’t consider. Among them was whether the trial judge wrongly forced the trial to be held in Boston and wrongly denied defense challenges to the seating of two jurors who they claim lied during questioning.
Tsarnaev’s guilt in the deaths of those killed in the bombing was not at issue in the appeal. His lawyers have argued that Tsarnaev fell under the influence of his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a gun battle with police days after the bombing.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted of all 30 charges against him. Prosecutors portrayed the brothers — ethnic Chechens who moved to the United States from Russia more than a decade ago — as full partners in a brutal and coldblooded plan to punish the U.S. for its wars in Muslim countries.
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