The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday reinstated the death penalty sentence for Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
The 6-3 ruling overturns a federal appeals court decision to void the sentence.
That 2020 ruling by the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals decision overturned Tsarnaev’s federal death penalty and instead sentenced the Kyrgyzstan-born terrorist to life without parole.
The appeals court said the trial judge improperly excluded evidence that showed Dzhokhar was heavily influenced by his older brother, Tamerlan.
FILE – This file photo released April 19, 2013, by the Federal Bureau of Investigation shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of carrying out the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing attack.
On April 15, 2013, the brothers placed two homemade “pressure cooker” bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon that exploded as runners of the 42-kilometer (26-mile) race arrived.
The attack killed three spectators and injured more than 260 others.
A massive manhunt ensued. Three days later, the brothers shot and killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer. On April 19, Tamerlan died after the gun battle with police. Dzhokhar, who had been shot, escaped. He surrendered to police later that evening after they found him hiding in a boat stored on a trailer.
The lower court also 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.
“Dzhokhar Tsarnaev committed heinous crimes. The Sixth Amendment nonetheless guaranteed him a fair trial before an impartial jury. He received one,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority.
In his dissent, retiring Justice Stephen Breyer wrote, “In my view, the Court of Appeals acted lawfully in holding that the District Court should have allowed Dzhokhar to introduce this evidence.”
U.S. military pilot Gail S. Halvorsen — known as the “Candy Bomber” for his candy airdrops during the Berlin airlift after World War II ended — has died at age 101.
Halvorsen died Wednesday following a brief illness in his home state of Utah, surrounded by most of his children, James Stewart, the director of the Gail S. Halvorsen Aviation Education Foundation, said Thursday.
Halvorsen was beloved and venerated in Berlin, which he last visited in 2019 when the city celebrated the 70th anniversary of the day the Soviets lifted their post-War World II blockade cutting off supplies to West Berlin with a big party at the former Tempelhof airport in the German capital.
“Halvorsen’s deeply human act has never been forgotten,” Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey said in a statement.
Retired Col. Gail Halvorsen, center, poses with boys and girls as he attends a ceremony to dedicate the baseball and softball field of the Berlin Braves baseball team in ‘Gail Halvorsen Park’ in Berlin , May 11, 2019.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox also praised Halvorsen, who was born in Salt Lake City but grew up on farms before getting his pilot’s license.
“I know he’s up there, handing out candy behind the pearly gates somewhere,” he said.
After the United States entered World War II following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Halvorsen trained as a fighter pilot and served as a transport pilot in the south Atlantic during World War II before flying food and other supplies to West Berlin as part of the airlift.
According to his account on the foundation’s website, Halvorsen had mixed feelings about the mission to help the United States’ former enemy after losing friends during the war.
But his attitude changed, and his new mission was launched, after meeting a group of children behind a fence at Templehof airport.
He offered them the two pieces of gum that he had, broken in half, and was touched to see those who got the gum sharing pieces of the wrapper with the other children, who smelled the paper. He promised to drop enough for all of them the following day as he flew, wiggling the wings of his plane as he flew over the airport, Halvorsen recalled.
He started doing so regularly, using his own candy ration, with handkerchiefs as parachutes to carry them to the ground. Soon other pilots and crews joined in what would be dubbed “Operation Little Vittles.”
After an Associated Press story appeared under the headline “Lollipop Bomber Flies Over Berlin,” a wave of candy and handkerchief donations, followed.
The airlift began on June 26, 1948, in an ambitious plan to feed and supply West Berlin after the Soviets — one of the four occupying powers of a divided Berlin after World War II — blockaded the city in an attempt to squeeze the U.S., Britain and France out of the enclave within Soviet-occupied eastern Germany.
Allied pilots flew 278,000 flights to Berlin, carrying about 2.3 million tons of food, coal, medicine and other supplies.
Finally, on May 12, 1949, the Soviets realized the blockade was futile and lifted their barricades. The airlift continued for several more months, however, as a precaution in case the Soviets changed their minds.
Memories in Germany of American soldiers handing out candy, chewing gum or fresh oranges are still omnipresent — especially for the older generation born during or right after the war.
Many fondly remember eating their first candy and fresh fruit during an era when people in bombed-out cities were starving or selling their family heirlooms on the black market for small amounts of flour, butter or oil just so they could get by.
Halvorsen’s efforts to reach out to the people of Berlin helped send a message that they were not forgotten and would not be abandoned, Stewart said.
Despite his initial ambivalence about the airlift, Halvorsen, who grew up poor during the Great Depression, recognized a bit of himself in the children behind the fence and made a connection with them, he said.
“A simple person to person act of kindness can really change the world,” Stewart said.
It was an attack that left a lasting mark on the U.S. in the waning days of its withdrawal from Afghanistan — a bombing and apparent follow-on attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul that left 13 American troops and more than 170 Afghans dead.
But a just-completed investigation by the U.S. military finds that much of what officials thought they knew about the August 26 attack at the airport’s Abbey Gate was wrong. In particular, the probe concludes that comments by senior commanders who argued it was part of a large and well-coordinated plot by the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate were misguided.
“This was not a complex attack,” Army Brigadier General Lance Curtis told reporters Friday, detailing the investigation’s findings.
“It was a single blast, and it did not have a follow-on attack,” Curtis said, still placing the blame with the group known as IS-Khorasan.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, which put U.S. forces in Kabul on heightened alert, senior U.S. commanders said there were two suicide bombers and that gunmen fired on both the crowd and U.S. troops following the explosions.
FILE – U.S. Marines are seen at Abbey Gate before a suicide bomber struck outside Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 26, 2021, in this image from a video released by the Department of Defense.
But Curtis and other military investigators now say that the evidence does not back that up, and that reports of a firefight with IS gunmen can be better explained by the nature of the bomb itself — made with about 9 kilograms (20 pounds) of military-grade explosives and ball bearings — and by the immediate response of U.S. and British troops in the vicinity of Abbey Gate.
The ball bearings, according to the investigators, created injuries that looked “remarkably similar to gunshot wounds.” And, they said, the reports of a firefight with militant gunmen likely were the result of U.S. troops on the ground hearing the echoes of warning shots fired by their colleagues within the confines of the security perimeter.
FILE – Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, attends a ceremony at Resolute Support headquarters, in Kabul, Afghanistan, July 12, 2021.
Commander of U.S. Central Command, General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, who helped oversee the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, praised the investigation, even though the conclusions differed from what he and others had said in the days following the deadly bombing.
“This was a terrible attack that resulted in tragic outcomes and a horrific loss of life, both Afghan and American,” McKenzie said. “While nothing can bring back the 11 Marines, one soldier and one sailor that we tragically lost in this attack, it is important that we fully understand what happened. Their sacrifice demands nothing less.”
Sources of evidence
Investigators said they based their findings on eyewitness testimony, video from a drone flying over the airport in the aftermath of the attack, forensic evidence and findings of medical examiners. They said, though, that they did not talk to any Afghan witnesses as U.S. troops had already left Afghanistan by the time their inquiry began.
They also emphasized that the evidence indicated all the deaths and injuries had been caused by the bomb itself, which they said was powerful enough to send shockwaves through the tightly packed crowds at Abbey Gate, spreading 50 meters from the detonation site.
“The disturbing lethality of this device was confirmed by the 58 U.S. service members who were killed and wounded despite the universal wear of body armor and helmets that did stop ball bearings that impacted them but could not prevent catastrophic injuries to areas not covered,” McKenzie said.
FILE – Flag-draped transfer cases of U.S. military service members who were killed by an August 26 suicide bombing at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport line the inside of a C-17 Globemaster II prior to transfer at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, Aug. 29, 2021. (U.S. Marines/Handout via Reuters)
Military officials said the power of the explosion was also enough to cause some troops to suffer from traumatic brain injuries.
Investigators further said there was no proof that anyone was hurt or killed when U.S. and British forces fired a series of warning shots while targeting a perceived threat following the explosion. They also said the probe found no evidence that the Taliban, who at that point were coordinating with U.S. forces on airport security, knew anything of the looming attack.
Asked if there was anything the U.S. could have or should have done differently to prevent the attack, Curtis said no.
“Based on our investigation at the tactical level, this was not preventable,” he told reporters. “The [U.S. military] leaders on the ground followed the proper measures, and any time there was an imminent threat warning, they followed the proper procedures.”
Following the attack on Kabul Airport’s Abbey Gate, U.S. President Joe Biden said the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, known as IS-Khorasan, would be held responsible.
“To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive,” Biden said in a nationally broadcast address. “We will hunt you down and make you pay.”
“We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place we choose and the moment of our choosing” he said.
The Abbey Gate bombing also left the U.S. military in Afghanistan on heightened alert and possibly contributed to a botched airstrike three days later that killed as many as 10 civilians, including an aid worker and seven children.
