This is more about the state of American society today than it is about Boston Marathon jihad murderer Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The Boston Globe reported Friday that “in a 182-page ruling that infuriated some victims [no kidding], the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that George A. O’Toole Jr., the judge in Tsarnaev’s 2015 trial, ‘did not meet the standard’ of fairness while presiding over jury selection.” The appeals court accordingly overturned Tsarnaev’s death sentence. Aside from cheating Tsarnaev out of his 72 virgins, this appeal denies justice to his victims.
Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson wrote in his ruling that “a core promise of our criminal justice system is that even the very worst among us deserves to be fairly tried and lawfully punished.” That is undeniably true, as is Thompson’s observation that the bombings were “one of the worst domestic terrorist attacks since the 9/11 atrocities.”
But how unfair was the trial in fact, and how unfair could it have been? There is no question that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is guilty. His actions were captured on video and abundantly documented. What’s more, he remained defiantly unrepentant for a considerable period after the attack. As prosecutors argued in April 2015 that he deserved the death penalty, they released a video of Tsarnaev three months after his attack, looking into the security camera in his cell, primping his hair in the reflection, and then flashing the V sign and then giving his middle finger to his jailers.
And why not? He believed he had done a righteous deed. The motivations of Dzhokhar and his brother and fellow jihad murderer Tamerlan Tsarnaev became clear very quickly after Dzhokhar was...
