Dzhokhar Anzorovich “Jahar” Tsarnaev, otherwise known as The Boston Bomber was sentenced to death 3 years ago today but has yet to be executed.
He was convicted and sentenced to death in 2015 for his role in the bombing near the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon. Tsarnaev is appealing his federal death penalty conviction. (All death penalty convictions are automatically appealed.)
Tsarnaev now sits in a prison cell in the United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility in Colorado — a federal supermax otherwise known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.”
Oddly, Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has warned the US of the “gravest consequences” if Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev or any other Muslim prisoner is executed.
“If the US administration kills our brother the hero Dzhokhar Tsarnaev or any Muslim,” Zawahri said in an online video, “[it] will bring America’s nationals the gravest consequences.”
It could be a few years when Tsarnaev exhausts his options for appeal and is scheduled to be put to death, or it could be more than a decade more. As it stands now, as The Economist detailed in 2014, far more people leave death row by dying of old age than they do by actual execution. Even more shockingly, 70 death row inmates were exonerated in 2011, while only 43 were put to death.
Now, Tsarnaev’s prison stay comes with uniquely extreme confinement conditions called Special Administrative Measures (SAMs). He can’t speak, literally.
Essentially a form of solitary confinement, SAMs prevent inmates from communicating with all but a few pre-approved individuals. Tsarnaev is not even allowed to communicate with other inmates in the facility.
Terrorist’s Buddy Released Last Month
(AP) — The second of three college buddies convicted for their roles in covering up for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is getting out of prison.
The Boston Herald reports that 24-year-old Robel Phillipos is scheduled to be released Monday from a residential re-entry management program in Philadelphia.
Phillipos was convicted in 2015 of lying to authorities investigating the 2013 bombing that killed three people and injured more than 260.