United States v. Tsarnaev

142 S.Ct. 1024

UNITED STATES, Petitioner

v.Dzhokhar A. TSARNAEV

No. 20-443

Supreme Court of the United States.

Argued October 13, 2021

Decided March 4, 2022

Deputy Solicitor General Eric J. Feigin for petitioner.

Ginger D. Anders, Washington, DC, for respondent.

Brian H. Fletcher, Acting Solicitor General, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for petitioner.

David Patton, Deirdre D. Von Dornum, Daniel Habib, Federal Defenders of New York, Inc., New York, NY, for respondent. Cliff Gardner, Law Offices of Cliff Gardner, Berkeley, CA, Ginger D. Anders, Counsel of Record, Brendan B. Gants, Xiaonan April Hu, Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, Washington, DC, for petitioner.

Elizabeth B. Prelogar, Acting Solicitor General Counsel of Record, John C. Demers, Assistant Attorney General, Nicholas L. McQuaid, Acting Assistant Attorney Genera, Eric J. Feigin, Deputy Solicitor General, Christopher G. Michel, Michael R. Huston, Assistants to the Solicitor General, William A. Glaser, Joseph F. Palmer, Attorneys, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for petitioner.

Justice THOMAS delivered the opinion of the Court.

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.

I

A

The Tsarnaev brothers immigrated to the United States in the early 2000s and lived in Massachusetts. Little more than a decade later, they were actively contemplating how to wage radical jihad. They downloaded and read al Qaeda propaganda, and, by December of 2012, began studying an al Qaeda guide to bomb making.

On April 15, 2013, the brothers went to the Boston Marathon finish line on Boylston Street. They each brought a backpack containing a homemade pressure-cooker bomb packed with explosives inside a layer of nails, BBs, and other metal scraps. Tamerlan left his backpack in a crowd of spectators and walked away. Dzhokhar stood with his backpack outside the Forum, a nearby restaurant where spectators watched the runners from the sidewalk and dining patio. For four minutes, Dzhokhar surveyed the crowd. After speaking with Tamerlan by phone, Dzhokhar left his backpack among the spectators. Tamerlan then detonated his bomb. While the crowd at the Forum looked toward the explosion, Dzhokhar walked the other way. After a few seconds, he detonated his bomb.

Each detonation sent fire and shrapnel in all directions. The blast from Tamerlan's bomb shattered Krystle Campbell's left femur and mutilated her legs. Though bystanders tried to save her, she bled to death on the sidewalk. Dzhokhar's bomb ripped open the legs of Boston University student Lingzi Lu. Rescuers tried to stem the bleeding by using a belt as a makeshift tourniquet. She too bled to death.

Eight-year-old Martin Richard absorbed the full blast of Dzhokhar's bomb. BBs, nails, and other metal fragments shot through his abdomen, cutting through his aorta, spinal cord, spleen, liver, pancreas, left kidney, and large intestines. The blast propelled shrapnel with such force that it exited his back. Other shrapnel nearly severed his left hand. The explosion also caused third-degree burns. Martin ultimately died from blood loss.

Dzhokhar's and Tamerlan's bombs maimed and wounded hundreds of other victims. Many people lost limbs, including Martin's 6-year-old sister, Jane. Many more would have died if not for the swift action of citizens and first responders.

After fleeing the scene, the brothers returned to their normal lives. Dzhokhar attended his college classes the next day. He went to the gym with friends. He posted online that he was "a stress free kind of guy." App. 145. Several days later, on April 18, after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released images of the suspected bombers, a friend saw the images and texted Dzhokhar. Dzhokhar responded: "Better not text me my friend. Lol." Id ., at 146.

Recognizing that investigators were closing in on them, Dzhokhar met up with Tamerlan that evening. The brothers collected more homemade bombs and a handgun and loaded them into Tamerlan's car. While driving past the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, they saw 27-year-old campus police officer Sean Collier sitting in his patrol car. They approached his car and shot him five times at close range, including once between the eyes. With Collier dead, the brothers tried to steal his service pistol but were unable to remove it from the holster. They then carjacked and robbed another man, Dun Meng, who was driving his SUV home from work. When the brothers forced Meng to stop at a gas station for fuel and snacks, he fled on foot. The brothers briefly chased him but gave up and made off with Meng's SUV.

Meng contacted the police, who used the SUV's GPS device to track the Tsarnaevs. When officers found the brothers in Watertown a few hours later, a street battle ensued. Tamerlan fired on the officers with a handgun, while Dzhokhar threw homemade bombs. When Tamerlan's handgun ran out of ammunition, officers subdued him. As they tried to handcuff Tamerlan, Dzhokhar returned to the SUV and sped towards the officers. They evaded the SUV. Tamerlan did not. Dzhokhar ran over Tamerlan and dragged him roughly 30 feet down the road. Tamerlan disentangled from the undercarriage when Dzhokhar rammed a police cruiser before escaping. Tamerlan died soon after from his injuries.

Dzhokhar abandoned the SUV a few blocks away. He found a covered boat in a nearby backyard. Taking shelter inside, he carved the words "stop killing our innocent people, and we will stop" into the planking. Id ., at 151. He also wrote a manifesto in pencil on the bulkhead of the boat's cockpit justifying his actions and welcoming his expected martyrdom. The next day, the boat's owner found him. Police eventually forced Dzhokhar out of the boat and arrested him.

B

A federal grand jury indicted Dzhokhar for 30 crimes, 17 of which were capital offenses. In preparation for jury selection, the parties jointly proposed a 100-question form to screen the prospective jurors. The District Court adopted almost all of them, including many that probed for bias. For example, some of the District Court's questions asked whether a prospective juror had a close association with law enforcement. Others asked whether a prospective juror had strong feelings about Islam, Chechens, or the several Central Asian regions with which the Tsarnaevs were connected. Still others asked whether the prospective juror had a personal connection to the bombing.

Several questions also probed whether media coverage might have biased a prospective juror. One question asked if the prospective juror had "formed an opinion" about the case because of what he had "seen or read in the news media." App. to Pet. for Cert. 373a. Others asked about the source, amount, and timing of the person's media consumption. Still another asked whether the prospective juror had commented or posted online about the bombings.

The District Court did reject one media-related question. The proposed questionnaire had asked each prospective juror to list the facts he had learned about the case from the media and other sources. Concerned that such a broad, "unfocused" question would "cause trouble" by producing "unmanageable data" of minimal value that would come to dominate the entire voir dire , the District Court declined to include it in the questionnaire. App. 480–481. After Dzhokhar objected to the removal, the District Court further explained that the question was "too unguided." Id ., at 486.

Recognizing the intense public interest in the case, the District Court summoned an expanded jury pool. In early January 2015, the court called 1,373 prospective jurors for the first round of jury selection. After reviewing their answers to the questionnaire, the court reduced the pool to 256. As jury selection began in earnest, Dzhokhar renewed his request that the court ask each juror about the content of the media he had consumed. The District Court again refused Dzhokhar's blanket request and instead permitted counsel to ask appropriate followup questions about a prospective juror's media consumption based on the answers to questions in the questionnaire or at voir dire . Several times, the court permitted Dzhokhar's attorneys to follow up on a prospective juror's earlier answers with specific questions about what the juror had seen or heard in the news. Over the course of three weeks of in-person questioning, the District Court and the parties reduced the 256 prospective jurors down to 12 seated jurors.

After the District Court seated the jury, the case went to trial. Dzhokhar did not contest his guilt and the jury thus returned a guilty verdict on all counts. During the sentencing phase, the Government argued that Dzhokhar's crimes warranted the death penalty. Dzhokhar's mitigation theory centered on the idea that Tamerlan masterminded the bombing. According to Dzhokhar, he was not sufficiently culpable to warrant the death penalty because his older brother had pressured him to participate.

To prove Tamerlan's domineering nature, Dzhokhar sought to introduce hearsay evidence of a crime Tamerlan allegedly had committed years earlier. Specifically, FBI agents investigating the bombings had come to suspect that Tamerlan's friend, Ibragim Todashev, possessed information about an unsolved triple homicide in...