The Boston Marathon Bombing was a terrorist attack that occurred on April 15, , when two bombs went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three spectators and wounding more than other people. After an intense manhunt, police captured one of the bombing suspects, year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whose older brother and fellow suspect, year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, died following a shootout with law enforcement.
Investigators concluded that the Tsarnaevs, who spent part of their childhoods in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, planned and carried out the attack on their own and were not connected to any terrorist groups.
The marathon began in the town of Hopkinton, west of Boston, with some 23, participants. The elite women runners started at a. Additional waves of runners took off at a. Rita Jeptoo of Kenya was the first female across the finish line, completing the At approximately that afternoon, with more than 5, runners still in the race, two pressure-cooker bombs—packed with shrapnel and hidden in backpacks among crowds of marathon-watchers—exploded within seconds of each other near the finish line along Boylston Street.
The blasts instantly turned the sun-filled afternoon into a gruesome scene of bloodshed, destruction and chaos. Three spectators died: a year-old woman, a year-old woman and an 8-year-old boy, while more than other people were wounded.
Sixteen people lost legs; the youngest amputee was a 7-year-old girl. An investigation involving more than 1, federal, state and local law enforcement personnel was immediately launched. A breakthrough in the case came less than two days later, when FBI analysts, poring through thousands of videos and photographs taken from security cameras in the area where the attack occurred, pinpointed two male suspects. The FBI released surveillance-camera images of the men, whose identities were then unknown, on the evening of April Soon after Collier was killed, Tamerlan Tsarnaev carjacked a Mercedes SUV at gunpoint, taking the driver hostage and telling him he was one of the Boston Marathon bombers.
The brothers drove around the Boston area with their hostage, forcing him to withdraw money from an ATM and discussing driving to New York City. When they stopped at a Cambridge gas station, the hostage escaped and called police, informing them the SUV could be tracked by his cellphone, which was still in the vehicle. Shortly after midnight, police in the Boston suburb of Watertown spotted the suspects in the stolen SUV and Honda Civic and tried to apprehend them.
A gun battle broke out on a Watertown street, with the Tsarnaevs exchanging fire with the police and hurling explosive devices at them. One officer was seriously injured by gunshots but survived. After Tamerlan Tsarnaev was tackled by police, his brother Dzhokhar drove the stolen SUV straight at them, running over his brother before speeding away.
He abandoned the SUV nearby then fled on foot. A gravely wounded Tamerlan Tsarnaev, whose body was riddled with bullets, was taken to a hospital, where doctors were unable to resuscitate him. That day, April 19, the Boston area was put on lockdown, with schools closed, public transportation service suspended and people advised to stay inside their homes, as police conducted door-to-door searches in Watertown and military-style vehicles patrolled the streets.
That evening, after law enforcement called off their search of the area, a Watertown man went out to his backyard to check on his dry-docked boat. He is incarcerated at the "Supermax" federal prison in Florence, Colorado. The Justice Department launched its appeal during Republican former President Donald Trump's administration and continued it after Democrat Joe Biden took office even though Biden opposes the federal government's use of the death penalty.
Opposition to the death penalty, as shown in opinion polls, has increased in the United States, while its use has declined. Liberal-leaning Massachusetts is among the growing number of U. Polls in and found a majority of Boston voters favored a life sentence for Tsarnaev. This year's marathon is being run on Monday, two days before the Supreme Court's arguments.
Even during his trial, victims disagreed about Tsarnaev's punishment. Bill and Denise Richard, Martin's parents, in a open letter published in the Boston Globe newspaper urged prosecutors not to pursue the death penalty, saying it would prompt years of appeals and "prolong reliving the most painful day of our lives.
During conference calls organized by prosecutors over the years, survivors expressed views on both sides of the debate, according to Andrew Lelling, the former top federal prosecutor in Massachusetts. Borgard, 30, said he worries that the Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority, could use this case "as a rationale for the execution of other human beings.
It was a shocking terrorist attack, a bombing near the finish line of the th running of the famed Boston Marathon in April that killed three spectators and injured more than others.
On Wednesday, the U. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on whether to reinstate the death penalty for convicted bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The court is reviewing a 1st Circuit Court of Appeals decision that overturned Tsarnaev's federal death penalty and instead sentenced the Kyrgyzstan-born terrorist to life without parole.
The lower court found that his trial could have been tainted by jurors who had already made up their minds because of the publicity surrounding the high-profile case that kept Americans glued to their televisions for days. At Wednesday's hearing, the nine justices seemed divided along ideological lines. The six conservative members appeared open to the argument that the death penalty should be reimposed and that the original trial judge acted properly. But the three liberal justices appeared sympathetic to arguments that Tsarnaev played a lesser role in the bombing and that evidence to that effect should not have been excluded from the trial.
President Joe Biden has spoken out against federal executions, which the former Trump administration resumed carrying out last year. Even so, Biden's deputy solicitor general, Eric Feigin, urged the high court to reimpose the death penalty, describing Tsarnaev as a "motivated terrorist who willingly maimed and murdered innocents, including an 8-year-old boy, in furtherance of jihad. Tsarnaev's lawyer, Ginger Anders, countered that her client, who was 19 at the time of the bombing, was less responsible for the bombing because he was influenced by his older brother and co-bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who allegedly masterminded the deadly attack.
Four days after the bombing, Tamerlan died of gunshot wounds and SUV injuries after a car chase and shootout with police. The U. Department of Justice under both the Trump and Biden administrations appealed the ruling.
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