Jurors in Boston’s next death penalty case will likely be asked about Boston Marathon bombing trial
Federal prosecutors in Boston’s next death penalty case plan on asking potential jurors about the Boston Marathon bombing trial.
Admitted serial killer Gary Lee Sampson is scheduled to be resentenced in U.S. District Court later this year. He was sentenced to death by a federal jury in 2003 after he admitted to carjacking and killing three people in Massachusetts and New Hampshire over several days in 2001.
A new trial was ordered by Senior District Judge Mark L. Wolf in 2011 after it was discovered one of the jurors that sentenced Sampson to death lied.
Because Sampson confessed to the killings of Jonathan Rizzo, 19, Philip McCloskey, 69, and Robert Whitney, 58, only the sentencing phase of the trial will take place.
Among the 110 questions proposed by prosecutors is one that asks about the last death penalty case in the district: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
The case of the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was recently tried in this courthouse. How might the fact that a jury found Tsarnaev guilty and imposed the death penalty affect your willingness to impose the death penalty in this case?
A jury recommended a death sentence for Tsarnaev on May 15.
Other questions revolve around how potential jurors feel about the death penalty, their connections to the case, and the court system.
A series of questions ask how jurors would weigh psychological or psychiatric testimony when deciding on a sentence of life or death.
It’s expected defense attorneys will highlight Sampson’s mental illness as a mitigating factor as to why he should be spared the death penalty.
Sampson is scheduled to be retried in September, but prosecutors have asked for Wolf to recuse himself because of the judge’s interactions with a potential witness in the upcoming case.
The Dzhokhar Tsarnaev trial in courtroom sketches
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