The First Circuit of the US Court of Appeals overturned the death sentence for one of the brothers convicted in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that left three people dead and more than 230 injured, court documents show.
The circuit court found that a lower court judge did not adequately account for pretrial publicity and the impact it had on the jury when it sentenced Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to die.
Tsarnaev will not be released from prison, but the case was remanded back to the lower court for a new sentencing phase.
“Just to be crystal clear,” the court wrote, “Dzhokhar will remain confined to prison for the rest of his life, with the only question remaining being whether the government will end his life by executing him.”
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan, who died in a shootout with police four days after the attack, planted two bombs made from pressure cookers at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013.
The two bombs exploded 14 seconds apart, approximately a block away from one another, killing three including an eight year old boy. The pair then killed an MIT police officer during the ensuing manhunt before they were located.