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Liberal Justice Elena Kagan clashed with her conservative colleague Brett Kavanaugh during a Supreme Court hearing over the Boston Bomber on Wednesday as they heard arguments about whether an appeals court was justified in overturning Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's death sentence.
It was a rare breach of protocol as liberal and conservative wings clashed over the punishment for Tsarnaev's role in the 2013 attack that killed three people.
The court's conservative majority appeared sympathetic toward the Justice Department's challenge to a 2020 lower court ruling that upheld his conviction but overturned his death sentence.
The three liberal justices asked tough questions but it appeared unlikely that enough of their six conservative colleagues would join them to secure a new trial to determine whether he should get a sentence of life in prison or death.
Sparks flew as the justices considered how the sentencing court excluded possibly mitigating evidence.
Supreme Court justices may disagree but they rarely criticize each other. On Wednesday Justice Elena Kagan clashed with Justice Brett Kavanaugh as they tussled over details of mitigating evidence in the trial of Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was 19 at the time of the attack. He was found guilty of 30 charges and sentenced to death in 2015. The death sentence was overturned in 2020
Three people were killed and 160 injured when two bombs exploded near the finish line of the 117th Boston Marathon in 2013
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Kagan quizzed government lawyer Eric Feigin about why the defense was not allowed to include evidence that Tsarnaev's brother Tamerlan may have been involved in a triple homicide two years before the bombing.
The evidence
