Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev suffers setback in appeals court ruling

Rick Sobey, Boston Herald on Jul 31, 2025

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BOSTON — Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has suffered a setback in his death penalty sentencing appeal.

Tsarnaev had been trying to toss the federal judge from the case, as the killer fights to dodge a death sentence.

But a federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that the judge — George A. O’Toole Jr. — will stay on for the case.

Tsarnaev was convicted in 2015 of all 30 charges against him, and remains locked up for life in the Colorado supermax prison ADX Florence.

Tsarnaev’s lawyers have been trying to get the judge removed from the sentencing case, arguing that he’s biased. His lawyers were seeking a “writ of mandamus” to shelve O’Toole.

“The basis for recusal is observations the judge made at various times over the past nine years in the context of two educational panels and a podcast, and certain statements he made to the jury,” reads the Thursday ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit.

O’Toole had talked about organizing complex jury trials and the problems associated with social media in that context.

“We have carefully reviewed the petition, the accompanying exhibits, and the relevant portions of the record,” the appeals court wrote. “We conclude that petitioner has not satisfied the ‘exacting’ standard generally applicable to mandamus petitions that seek the recusal of a district court judge… Accordingly, petitioner’s petition for a writ of mandamus is denied.”

The twin bombing on Boylston Street that fateful April day killed Martin Richard, 8; Krystle Campbell, 29; and Lu Lingzi, 23. More than 260 people were also injured and maimed. MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, 27, was shot execution-style days later by Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan, who was killed hours later in a firefight in Watertown.

Boston Police Officer Dennis Simmonds, 28, injured in the Watertown shootout, died in April 2014.

Tsarnaev’s attorneys appealed the death sentence, and the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his death sentence and ordered a new penalty trial to decide his penalty on the grounds that the judge failed to question jurors enough about their exposure to the copious news coverage of the act of terror.

The U.S. Supreme Court in March 2022 reversed the findings of the Circuit court and reimposed the death penalty.

The current appeal targets two specific jurors — identified as jurors 138 and 286 — who appellate attorneys argue demonstrated heavy bias in social media postings about Tsarnaev in contradiction to their answers to pretrial questioning.

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