Voting 6-3, SCOTUS reinstates vacated death sentence for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

The Supreme Court this morning handed down its ruling in US v. Tsarnaev, No. 20-443 (S. Ct. March 4, 2022) (available here).  When the US Supreme Court back in March 2021 decided to grant cert on the federal government’s appeal of the First Circuit’s reversal of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s death sentence, the smart bet would have been that a majority of Justices were inclined to reinstate that death sentence.  Such a bet looked even smarter after the Supreme Court oral argument in October 2021 which revealed a predictable ideological split and strongly suggested a majority of Justices were inclined to reinstate Tsarnaev’s death sentence.  Here is how Justice Thomas’s opinion for the Court gets started:

On April 15, 2013, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev planted and detonated two homemade pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.  The blasts hurled nails and metal debris into the assembled crowd, killing three while maiming and wounding hundreds.  Three days later, the brothers murdered a campus police officer, carjacked a graduate student, and fired on police who had located them in the stolen vehicle.  Dzhokhar attempted to flee in the vehicle but inadvertently killed Tamerlan by running him over. Dzhokhar was soon arrested and indicted.

A jury found Dzhokhar guilty of 30 federal crimes and recommended the death penalty for 6 of them. The District Court accordingly sentenced Dzhokhar to death. The Court of Appeals vacated the death sentence. We now reverse.

Justice Barrett authored a concurrence joined by Justice Gorsuch which starts this way:

In this case, the First Circuit asserted “supervisory power” to impose a procedural rule on the District Court. Because that rule (which required a district court to ask media-content questions on request in high-profile prosecutions) conflicts with our cases (which hold that a district court has broad discretion to manage jury selection), I agree with the Court that the First Circuit erred.

I write separately to note my skepticism that the courts of appeals possess such supervisory power in the first place.

Justice Breyer authored the sole dissent, which was joined by Justice Sotomayor and mostly by Justice Kagan.  It starts this way:

During the sentencing phase of his murder trial, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev argued that he should not receive the death penalty primarily on the ground that his older brother Tamerlan took the leading role and induced Dzhokhar’s participation in the bombings.  Dzhokhar argued that Tamerlan was a highly violent man, that Tamerlan radicalized him, and that Dzhokhar participated in the bombings because of Tamerlan’s violent influence and leadership.  In support of this argument, Dzhokhar sought to introduce evidence that Tamerlan previously committed three brutal, ideologically inspired murders in Waltham, Massachusetts. The District Court prohibited Dzhokhar from introducing this evidence.  The Court of Appeals held that the District Court abused its discretion by doing so. 968 F. 3d 24, 73 (CA1 2020).

This Court now reverses the Court of Appeals.  In my view, the Court of Appeals acted lawfully in holding that the District Court should have allowed Dzhokhar to introduce this evidence.