Jahar Tsarnaev: Death Sentence, Appeals, and Juror Bias

Jahar Tsarnaev, whose legal name is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is the convicted Boston Marathon bomber. A federal jury found him guilty on all 30 counts in April 2015 and sentenced him to death for the April 15, 2013, attack that killed three people and injured more than 260. His death sentence was thrown out on appeal in 2020, reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, and is again under threat from a federal juror-bias investigation that remains unresolved as of August 2025.

Who He Is

Tsarnaev was born in 1993 in Dagestan, Russia, into an ethnic Chechen family that had lived for generations in Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan.¹ The family emigrated to the United States around 2002 and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts.²

At Cambridge Rindge and Latin School he was popular, captain of the wrestling team, and known to friends as “Jahar.” In 2011 he received a $2,500 scholarship from the City of Cambridge and enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth to study nursing. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen on September 11, 2012.³

His older brother Tamerlan followed a different path. A 26-year-old former Golden Gloves boxer, Tamerlan had, according to family members, become radicalized around 2009, dropping out of community college and gravitating toward extremist material online.³ The relationship between the brothers would become central to Tsarnaev’s later defense.

The Boston Marathon Bombing

On April 15, 2013, two homemade pressure-cooker bombs hidden in backpacks detonated near the finish line of the 117th Boston Marathon on Boylston Street. The first went off at 2:49 p.m. at 671 Boylston Street. The second exploded 13 seconds later at 755 Boylston Street.⁴

Three spectators were killed: Martin Richard, age 8; Krystle Campbell, 29; and Lingzi Lu, 23. More than 260 others were injured.⁴

The Manhunt and Capture

The FBI released photos and video of both suspects on April 18. That night, the Tsarnaev brothers fatally shot MIT Police Officer Sean Collier on the university’s campus, attempted to steal his weapon, then carjacked a Mercedes SUV and robbed the driver of $800.⁵ The driver escaped and alerted police, who tracked the vehicle to Watertown.⁴

A firefight broke out. More than 200 rounds were exchanged and additional improvised explosives detonated. Tamerlan was wounded in the fight. As Dzhokhar fled in the SUV, he struck and dragged his brother, who was pronounced dead at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in the early hours of April 19.⁶ Authorities imposed a shelter-in-place order across Watertown and surrounding communities. That evening, a Watertown resident found Dzhokhar hiding in a boat stored in his backyard. After a brief standoff, Tsarnaev was arrested at 8:41 p.m.⁴

What Investigators Found

Prosecutors presented extensive evidence that Tsarnaev had immersed himself in jihadist ideology before the attack. His laptop contained a downloaded edition of Inspire, the English-language propaganda magazine of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, including the article “How to Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.” Investigators also found Join the Caravan by al-Qaeda founder Abdullah Azzam and multiple speeches by Anwar al-Awlaki.⁷

The most damaging piece of evidence was the “boat note,” scrawled in pencil inside the vessel where Tsarnaev hid. He wrote that he did not mourn his brother because “his soul is very much alive,” asked God to “make me a shaheed” (martyr), and described the bombings as retribution for American military actions against Muslims.⁷ Counterterrorism expert Matthew Levitt testified that language in the note tracked directly with passages from Inspire and al-Awlaki’s writings.⁸

Tsarnaev maintained two Twitter accounts. One, @J_tsar, was relatively mainstream. The other, @Al_firdausiA, urged followers to listen to al-Awlaki’s lectures.⁷

The Federal Trial and Death Sentence

Tsarnaev was indicted on 30 federal counts, 17 of them capital offenses, including use of a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death, bombing of a place of public use resulting in death, malicious destruction of property resulting in death, carjacking resulting in serious bodily injury, use of a firearm during a crime of violence causing death, and conspiracy. The case was tried in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts before Judge George A. O’Toole Jr.⁹

The defense filed three motions to move the trial out of Boston, citing polling that showed nearly 89% of potential jurors in the district recognized Tsarnaev by name and 57% already believed he was “definitely guilty.”¹⁰ Judge O’Toole denied all three, and the First Circuit denied emergency relief, holding that the court’s questionnaire-and-questioning process could seat an impartial jury.¹¹

Tsarnaev was represented by Judy Clarke, a nationally prominent capital-defense attorney whose past clients included Ted Kaczynski, Eric Rudolph, Zacarias Moussaoui, and Jared Lee Loughner. She was joined by federal defender Miriam Conrad and veteran capital lawyer David Bruck.¹² Clarke had first tried to negotiate a guilty plea in exchange for life without parole, but the government, with authorization from then-Attorney General Eric Holder, refused to take the death penalty off the table.¹³

Clarke’s strategy was to concede guilt and save credibility for the penalty phase. “There’s little that occurred the week of April the 15th… that we dispute,” she told the jury in her opening.¹² On April 8, 2015, the jury found Tsarnaev guilty on all 30 counts.⁹

In the penalty phase, the defense argued that Tamerlan was the “mastermind” who pressured his younger brother into participating. Clarke described Dzhokhar as a 19-year-old college student who was “floundering” and had fallen under the influence of the older brother he “adored.”¹⁴ The defense wanted to introduce evidence that Tamerlan had participated in an unsolved 2011 triple homicide in Waltham, Massachusetts, in which three men were found with their throats slit, to show his propensity for violence. Judge O’Toole excluded the evidence as insufficiently reliable.¹⁵ The reliability problem stemmed from the fact that the only person to have implicated Tamerlan in those killings, an acquaintance named Ibragim Todashev, was shot and killed by an FBI agent during a follow-up interview the day after his statement.¹⁶

The jury was not persuaded by the mitigation case. On six of the 17 capital-eligible counts, tied to the bomb detonated in front of the Forum restaurant that killed Lingzi Lu and Martin Richard, the jury recommended death. Judge O’Toole formally imposed the sentence in June 2015.⁹

At the sentencing hearing, 24 survivors and family members addressed Tsarnaev. Bill Richard, Martin’s father, told the courtroom: “He chose hate, destruction. He chose death. This is all on him. We chose love. We chose kindness, peace.”¹⁷ Survivor Rebekah Gregory, who lost a leg, told him directly: “I am not your or your brother’s victim.” Survivor Henry Borgard said he had found a way to forgive Tsarnaev “despite all that he did to me.”¹⁸

How the Death Sentence Was Vacated, Then Reinstated

After the trial, appellate lawyer Clifford Gardner took over from Clarke.¹⁹ In July 2020, the First Circuit vacated the death sentence on two grounds. It held that Judge O’Toole had failed to adequately screen jurors for bias caused by pretrial publicity, relying on general questions about setting aside opinions rather than probing what specific content jurors had seen. It also found that excluding the Waltham triple-homicide evidence had been an abuse of discretion.¹⁵ The convictions themselves were left in place; only the penalty phase was to be redone.

The government petitioned the Supreme Court, which granted certiorari in March 2021.²⁰ On March 4, 2022, a 6–3 Court reversed the First Circuit and reinstated the death sentence.²¹

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. The Court held that trial judges have broad discretion over jury selection and that appellate courts cannot impose prophylactic rules requiring particular lines of questioning. Judge O’Toole’s 100-question form, individual questioning, and instructions to decide based only on trial evidence were held sufficient. On the Waltham evidence, the Court found that exclusion was reasonable because all primary witnesses to that crime were dead, leaving the evidence with little probative value and a high risk of confusing the jury.²² Justice Breyer dissented, joined by Justice Kagan and, in part, Justice Sotomayor, arguing that trial courts should be especially cautious about excluding mitigating evidence in a capital case.¹⁵

The Juror-Bias Investigation That Could Still Undo the Sentence

The Supreme Court’s ruling did not end the case. On March 21, 2024, the First Circuit issued a 2–1 decision sending the case back to Judge O’Toole to investigate allegations that two jurors had been dishonest during jury selection.²³ Defense attorneys had uncovered social media activity that appeared to contradict what the jurors said in court:

The foreperson had told the court she had not commented on the case online, but the defense found 22 tweets or retweets about the bombings, including a post calling Tsarnaev a “piece of garbage.”²⁴
A second juror had said none of his Facebook friends had discussed the trial, but the defense discovered a friend had messaged him urging him to “play the part” so he could get on the jury and send Tsarnaev “to jail where he will be taken care of.”²⁴

The First Circuit ruled that Judge O’Toole “fell short of what was constitutionally required” in his initial handling of these allegations and ordered a proper investigation.²⁵ If the judge finds that either juror should have been disqualified, the death sentence would be vacated a second time and a new penalty-phase trial ordered. The underlying conviction on all 30 counts would remain intact regardless.²³

The defense then moved to remove Judge O’Toole from overseeing the investigation, arguing that comments he made on podcasts and at public events praising his jurors and defending the selection process showed he could not be impartial.²⁶ O’Toole refused to recuse himself. On July 31, 2025, a three-judge panel of the First Circuit upheld that refusal, characterizing his public statements as general discussions about managing complex jury trials.²⁷ As of August 2025, Tsarnaev’s attorneys have petitioned for en banc rehearing by the full First Circuit. It remains unclear when Judge O’Toole will rule on the underlying juror-bias question.²⁸

Will He Actually Be Executed?

Even with a death sentence formally in place, carrying it out requires the alignment of legal finality and executive policy, and neither is settled.

The Biden administration imposed a moratorium on federal executions in July 2021. In December 2024, Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 of 40 federal death-row inmates to life without parole. He explicitly excluded Tsarnaev, along with Dylann Roof and Robert Bowers, saying the commutations were “consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”²⁹

The Trump administration moved in the opposite direction after taking office in January 2025. On his first day, President Trump signed an executive order directing the Justice Department to prioritize seeking and carrying out death sentences.³⁰ Attorney General Pamela Bondi formally lifted the moratorium on February 5, 2025, reinstated the earlier lethal-injection protocol, and directed the Bureau of Prisons to expand authorized execution methods to include the firing squad.³¹ No execution date for Tsarnaev has been announced, and none can be set while his appeals remain active.

Where He Is Held Now

Tsarnaev is held at the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum (ADX) in Florence, Colorado, sometimes called the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.”³² He is housed in the H-Unit under Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) that strictly limit his contact with the outside world.³³

He has filed suit over his conditions, including a claim seeking $250,000 in damages over confiscation of personal items and lack of shower access.³² In a separate self-represented case, a federal magistrate judge allowed his challenge to a SAMs restriction barring phone contact with his nieces and nephews to move forward, noting that the prison permitted in-person visits with those same family members while barring calls and letters. The judge also described the Bureau of Prisons’ initial response to Tsarnaev’s grievances as “misleading,” after a government attorney acknowledged the prison had wrongly told him it lacked authority to modify his restrictions.³³

1
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Tsarnaev Childhood, Family in Kyrgyzstan, Chechnya, Dagestan
2
BBC News. Boston Marathon Bombing Trial
3
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4
Policing Institute. After Action Report for the Response to the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings
5
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6
Britannica. Boston Marathon Bombing of 2013
7
CNN. Tsarnaev Radicalization
8
Washington Institute. Counterterrorism Expert Matthew Levitt Testifies in Boston
9
U.S. Department of Justice. Judge Imposes Death Sentence on Boston Marathon Bomber
10
Mass Lawyers Weekly. Second Motion to Change Venue
11
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12
The New Yorker. Judy Clarke, Defense Lawyer for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
13
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14
The Guardian. Boston Marathon Bombing Trial Next Steps
15
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16
WBUR. Tsarnaev Waltham Triple Homicide
17
Boston 25 News. Survivors, Victims’ Families Speak at Tsarnaev’s Sentencing
18
WBUR. Tsarnaev Victim Impact Statements
19
Boston Herald. Tsarnaev Lawyer Wants No Part of Appeal Defense
20
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21
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22
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23
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24
NBC Boston. Review of 2 Jurors in Boston Marathon Bomber Case Ordered
25
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26
Boston Globe. Marathon Bomber Rehearing to Remove Judge
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Boston.com. Federal Court Denies Boston Marathon Bomber’s Request for New Judge
28
WCAX. Federal Court Denies Boston Bomber’s Request for New Judge
29
WCVB. Tsarnaev Excluded From Biden Death Row Commutations
30
The White House. Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety
31
U.S. Department of Justice. Justice Department Takes Actions to Strengthen Federal Death Penalty
32
Boston Herald. Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Sues Colorado Supermax
33
Colorado Politics. Federal Judge Considers Boston Bomber’s Restrictions