Tsarnaev’s guilt in the deaths of those killed in the bombing was not at issue in the appeal, which concerns whether he will receive the death penalty.
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The federal judge presiding over the Boston Marathon bomber's attempt to overturn his death sentence has shot down a motion for his recusal, the Boston Globe reported.
Lawyers for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev requested U.S. District Court Judge George O’Toole's removal from the case last year, arguing that O'Toole's comments about the case on podcasts and at events constituted bias.
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Prosecutors challenged the merit of the defense's request.
On Friday, O'Toole ruled against Tsarnaev's motion, explaining that the defense had “not met the high threshold required” to necessitate O'Toole's recusal, according to court records reviewed by the Globe.
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“An objective, knowledgeable member of the public would not find a reasonable basis for doubting my ability to follow my oath to faithfully apply the law, including the instructions of the First Circuit, and impartially preside over an investigation into the voire dire answers and potential bias of the jurors,” O’Toole wrote in the ruling, the Globe reported.
O'Toole is overseeing a review of Tsarnaev's sentence for the 2013 bombing that left three people dead and hundreds injured near the finish line of the marathon.
In January 2023, Tsarnaev's lawyers made a new attempt to overthrow the 31-year-old's death sentence over claims of jury misconduct. Then, in March 2024, a federal appeals court directed O'Toole to investigate whether there was jury bias and, if so, grant Tsarnaev a new trial to determine whether his sentence will be changed to life in prison.
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Tsarnaev is currently on death row at a Colorado supermax prison.
His attorney first appealed his death sentence on the grounds of juror misconduct after his 2015 conviction. In 2020, the First Circuit Court ruled in Tsarnaev's favor, throwing out his sentence due to the trial judge's failure to sufficiently interrogate jurors' exposure to potentially inflammatory news coverage of the bombing.
Two years later, however, the Supreme Court overturned the appeals court's ruling on a vote of 6-3 and reinstated the death sentence.
Tsarnaev's lawyers brought the case back to the First Circuit in 2023 with new charges that the judge had unfairly required the trial to be held in Boston and wrongly ruled against defense challenges to two jurors they claim lied during questioning.
“It is apparent that the Court of Appeals intended that this Court investigate the potential bias of the two jurors at issue,” O’Toole wrote in his ruling, according to the Globe. “The instruction was plainly directed to this district judge. Recusal would be at odds with the direction of the Court of Appeals.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
