The Volokh Conspiracy

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S. Ct. Will Hear Government's Appeal of Reversal of Boston Marathon Bomber's Sentence

|The Volokh Conspiracy |


The government's petition is here, and the decision below is here. Here are the Questions Presented from the petition:

1. Whether the court of appeals erred in concluding that respondent's capital sentences must be vacated on the ground that the district court, during its 21-day voir dire, did not ask each prospective juror for a specific accounting of the pretrial media coverage that he or she had read, heard, or seen about respondent's case.

2. Whether the district court committed reversible error at the penalty phase of respondent's trial by excluding evidence that respondent's older brother was allegedly involved in different crimes two years before the offenses for which respondent was convicted.

Eugene Volokh is the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA and a Visiting Fellow (Senior Fellow starting May 2024) at the Hoover Institution (Stanford). Naturally, his posts here (like the opinions of the other bloggers) are his own, and not endorsed by any educational institution.