President Donald Trump sounded off Sunday on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling overturning Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s death sentence in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
"Death penalty!" Trump tweeted on Sunday morning. "He killed and badly wounded many. Justice!"
Trump expounded on his statement a bit more in a Facebook post, saying "Rarely has anybody deserved the death penalty more than the Boston Bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev."
He said the court agreed that this "was one of the worst domestic terrorist attacks since the 9/11 atrocities," yet the appeals court still tossed Tsarnaev's death sentence.
"So many lives lost and ruined," Trump said. "The Federal Government must again seek the Death Penalty in a do-over of that chapter of the original trial. Our Country cannot let the appellate decision stand. Also, it is ridiculous that this process is taking so long!"
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A three-judge panel of federal judges ordered a new penalty-phase trial on whether the 27-year-old Tsarnaev should be executed for the attack that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others.
Tsarnaev’s lawyers acknowledged at the beginning of his trial that he and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, set off the two bombs at the marathon finish line. But they argued that Dzhokar Tsarnaev is less culpable than his brother, who they said was the mastermind behind the attack.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a gunbattle with police a few days after the April 15, 2013, bombing. Dzhokar Tsarnaev is now behind bars at a high-security supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.
Tsarnaev’s attorneys identified a slew of issues with his trial, but said in a brief filed with the court that the “first fundamental error” was the judge’s refusal to move the case out of Boston. They also pointed to social media posts from two jurors suggesting they harbored strong opinions even before the 2015 trial started.
Tsarnaev was convicted on 30 charges, including conspiracy and use of a weapon of mass destruction.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston said they are currently reviewing the opinion and declined further comment on Friday.
