Mass. Politicians react to Biden's decision to keep the Boston Marathon bomber on death row

Massachusetts leaders responded Monday to President Biden’s decision to remove Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev from the list of death row inmates who have been granted commutations.

Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row to life in prison without parole. The White House said the president decided not to commute the sentences of men involved in hate crimes or terrorism, including Tsarnaev.

Biden also excluded Dylann Roof, who carried out the racist murders of nine black church members in South Carolina in 2015, and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.

Gov. Maura Healey told reporters the decision means Tsarnaev will continue to be “held accountable.” She said she still thinks about the pain his actions caused.

“We all remember that terrible day,” she said. “Tsarnaev will continue to face the death penalty and be held accountable. But right now – this holiday season – I’m thinking about the families, the victims. Think of the law enforcement, the first responders who responded courageously in this moment.”

U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts praised Biden for commuting the sentences of 37 more people.

“There is no more powerful and just action than saving someone’s life,” she said in a statement. “The death penalty is a racist, flawed and fundamentally unjust punishment that has no place in any society.”

Her comment did not mention Tsarnaev. However, she previously condemned the Supreme Court’s decision to reinstate the death penalty against him and supported legislation to completely abolish the death penalty at the federal level.

Tsarnaev’s lawyers have not given up the fight to overturn his sentence. A federal appeals court ruled in March that the trial court judge must investigate whether two jurors should have been excluded because of bias in the case. If the investigation shows that one of the jurors should have been excluded from the jury, Tsarnaev would be entitled to a new trial, the court ruled.

Defense attorneys have also asked that U.S. District Court Judge George O’Toole be removed from the case over comments he made on podcasts and other public places.

Daniel Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University who has followed Tsarnaev’s case closely, said it was “impossible to predict the outcome of all appeals.”

Medved said it is common for the appeal process of death sentences across the country to take years because there is so much at stake. The average time between conviction and execution is nearly 19 years, longer than many other cases, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

“The difference with the death penalty is that it is irrevocable,” he said. “So you want to make sure it’s right.”

But Medved said it was unlikely that future presidents would commute Tsarnaev’s sentence, given Biden’s decision and Trump’s support of the death penalty.

Former Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, who prosecuted the marathon bombing case, said she was “satisfied” that Biden did not put Tsarnaev on the commutation list. But Ortiz questioned the different ways presidents decide to handle death penalty cases.

“What certainly concerns me greatly at this point is the inconsistency in the way it seems to be enforced,” Ortiz told WBUR. “It has become so politicized that no action is taken if you are on death row during a particular administration. And yet, when you’re on death row in another administration, which is obviously President Trump, it seems like, “We need to expedite the processing of these cases.”

Ortiz said Congress should investigate discrepancies in the way the federal government administers the death penalty.

Prosecutors said Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan planted two bombs at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring hundreds more.

While fleeing police, the Tsarnaev brothers killed MIT officer Sean Collier in Cambridge on April 18 and engaged in a shootout with police in Watertown the following day, killing Tamerlan. Dzhokhar was later found hiding in a backyard boat. Boston Police Sgt. Dennis “DJ” Simmonds died a year later after sustaining head injuries in the Watertown shooting.

Tsarnaev was sentenced to death in 2015 and is currently being held at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. His lawyers did not deny his involvement in the bombing, but suspected his brother was the ringleader.

Bombing victims and their families have expressed varying views on Tsarnaev’s death sentence.

This is a developing story. It will be updated as more information becomes available.

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