Boston Marathon bombing survivor calls for death penalty for Tsarnaev as SCOTUS prepares to hear case

On Monday, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear the case this fall for reinstating the death penalty against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of two perpetrators of the infamous Boston Marathon bombing. Now, a severely injured survivor of that attack is speaking out about why the ruling that took Tsarnaev off death row should be reversed.

According to Fox News, Marc Fucarile has a prosthetic leg and still-painful burns from being near the finish line at the time of the bombing, and he says he wants Tsarnaev to get the death penalty for his crime.

Fucarile was in the hospital for three months after the bombing, and he still has constant pain from being burned on 80% of his lower body, as well as shrapnel in his heart.

“If this doesn’t justify a death sentence, what does in our country?” he asked, according to Fox.

Biden waffling on death penalty

Three people were killed and at least 264 injured in the 2013 bombing, which was carried out by Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan, who was killed in a police shootout four days afterward, according to reports.

President Joe Biden said repeatedly during his campaign that he opposes the death penalty, but the Barack Obama administration of which he was a part lobbied for it in the case in 2014, as The Washington Post noted.

In July 2020, the death penalty was struck in the case on a technicality, Fox reported. Tsarnaev will still spend the rest of his life in prison even if he is not executed, the judge said at the time of the ruling.

Biden, for his part, is now straddling the fence on whether the death penalty should be reinstituted in the case, according to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.

“President Biden has made clear…that he has grave concerns about whether capital punishment…is consistent with the values that are fundamental to our sense of justice and fairness,” Psaki said recently, according to Fox. “He’s also expressed his horror at…Tsarnaev’s actions… Any process for the death penalty policy moving forward, I don’t have any updates on that.”

“Sad and scary”

The case will be heard in the fall, and Fucarile said he hopes for a permanent resolution to the issue.

It makes him angry to have to be “living this again and again with the person or people responsible for what happened,” as this case drags on, he said, according to Fox.

While on one hand, it is a mark of a civilized society that all people get due process no matter how horrible their crimes, Fucarile said, “it’s sad that criminals…have more rights than the victims. It’s really sad and scary.”

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