Copyrighted Image? DMCA | Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is years from the death chamber -- if he ever makes it -- despite Friday's sentence by a federal jury.
A lengthy appeals process, as well as legal and technical complications with lethal injection, are just some of the factors that could prevent Tsarnaev, 21, from receiving the punishment the jury imposed. Tsarnaev, who will be formally sentenced by a judge this summer, is poised to be the first terrorist in the post-9/11 era to be executed. But the government has a thin track record of actually executing federal death row prisoners. Federal courts have handed down death sentences 80 times since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988, but only three inmates have been executed. |