Barr to appeal Boston bomber Tsarnaev case to Supreme Court, try to reinstate death penalty

The Justice Department will try to reinstate a death penalty for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who helped in the 2013 attack that killed three people and injured more than 260 others.

Attorney General William Barr on Thursday told the Associated Press that the department would appeal a court ruling last month that threw out Tsarnaev’s death sentence and ordered a trial to determine whether he should be executed for the attack .

Barr said the department would take the matter to the Supreme Court.

“We will do whatever’s necessary,” he told the wire service. “We will take it up to the Supreme Court and we will continue to pursue the death penalty.”

Under Barr, the Justice Department has again begun carrying out federal executions, putting three men to death so far and scheduling at least three others next week and in September.

In the Tsarnaev case, a three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit court found in July that the judge who oversaw the 2015 trial did not adequately question potential jurors about what they had read or heard about the highly publicized case.