Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev loses bid to remove judge overseeing death sentence battle

BOSTON — Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has lost his bid to remove the judge overseeing the lengthy legal battle over his death sentence.

In August 2024, Tsarnaev’s attorneys challenged U.S. District Court Judge George O’Toole’s impartiality, citing comments O’Toole made about the case during podcasts and at public events.

However, in a ruling dated July 31, 2025, three First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals judges determined that Tsarnaev’s defense failed to prove that keeping O’Toole on the case would cause irreparable harm to the convicted killer’s ongoing appeals.

“We ask whether a reasonable person, fully informed of all the relevant facts, would fairly question the trial judge’s impartiality,” the judges wrote in their denial of the request.

Tsarnaev has been trying to overturn his death sentence, arguing that two jurors lied during questioning.

O’Toole presided over the trial where Tsarnaev was convicted and sentenced to death. This latest ruling is a setback in his efforts to challenge the fairness of his trial.

The decision to keep O’Toole on the case means that Tsarnaev’s appeals will continue under the same judicial oversight, as he seeks to have his death sentence overturned.

Defense lawyers have argued that Tsarnaev had fallen under the influence of his older brother, Tamerlan, who died in a gun battle with police a few days after the April 15, 2013, bombing.

Tsarnaev was convicted of all 30 charges against him, including conspiracy and use of a weapon of mass destruction, and the killing of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Officer Sean Collier during the Tsarnaev brothers’ getaway attempt.

Lingzi Lu, a 23-year-old Boston University graduate student from China, Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager from Medford, and 8-year-old Martin Richard, of Boston, all died in the bombing.

Read the U.S. Court of Appeals ruling below:

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