The life of the author of the Boston bombings is in danger in the US Supreme Court

The fate of Johor Jorney, convicted of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, was played out before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, raising questions about whether he should spend the rest of his life in prison or be hanged.

The case, which raises fundamental questions about the selection of judges for high-profile crimes, also reveals President Joe Biden’s contradictions on the death penalty.

The Democrats during their campaign promised to remove the sentence at the federal level. But his government will argue before nine wise men in the High Court on Wednesday, thus re-enforcing the death sentence originally announced against Johor Charne.

In 2013, this young student of Chechen descent planted two homemade bombs in the final row of the Boston Marathon with his older brother Tamerlane, killing three people, including an eight-year-old child, and injuring 264 others.

The two brothers, identified by surveillance cameras, fled, killing a police officer while they were running. Three days after the attack, the senior was shot dead during a confrontation with police.

Johor Jarnev was injured and was hidden in a boat. He wrote on a wall that he wanted revenge on Muslims killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

– “Eligible” –

During a 2015 trial in federal court in Boston, his lawyers said the young man, 19, (now 28), was under the influence of his self-proclaimed elder. Without denying the seriousness of the facts, they demanded a life sentence.

The judges did not believe and chose the death penalty.

In 2020, the Federal Court of Appeals overturned the sentence, citing two counts of abuse.

According to her, in this highly publicized case, it is necessary to question potential judges as to what they read or saw at the time of the attack in order to dismiss those who had already formed their opinion.

Similarly, he ruled that the court’s rejection of the defense request to incite the three murders of 2011 was a mistake, perhaps made by senior Jarnev as evidence of his leadership qualities.

The then-president, Donald Trump, was harshly critical of the Court of Appeal, believing that the death penalty was “rarely deserving” like Joker Tsarnaev. His government appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn his decision.

Joe Biden once in the White House, his government may have withdrawn this request, especially since the Court of Appeals made it clear that Johor Jarnev deserved to be imprisoned for life. But he allowed it to take its course and a representative of the judiciary will defend it in the Supreme Court on Wednesday on behalf of the United States.

– “Ineligible” –

In an argument sent before the trial, the government assures us that the young man was “ready to commit these crimes (…) and is proud of his actions.”

According to him, “his decision would not have changed” if the jury had seen the video of him bombing a house behind a group of people who had been involved in crimes without any involvement two years ago.

“It does not mean that a person cannot judge without prejudice,” he added.

If there had ever been a file asking what the “judges” asked before the trial, Jocher Jorney’s lawyers would have replied, “This is it.” And on social media, his executional (…) inflammatory comments about his religion and his immigration status … “

They have the backing of impartial psychologists and former federal judges and lawyers, for whom they “individually ask judges who are known to be an effective and controversial mechanism for setting up a neutral arbitral tribunal.”

The Supreme Court is expected to deliver its decision by the end of June 2022.