Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could be executed a lot more quickly than many killers sentenced to die by a federal jury, former U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey tells
Newsmax TV.
"We're talking about five years — and it could be a little less," Coffey, a partner at Coffey Burlington LLC in Miami, said on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Friday.
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Earlier Friday, the jury chose death by lethal injection instead of life behind bars for Tsarnaev, who had been convicted in the 2013 bombing in which three people were killed and 264 wounded.
"When jurors take an oath in such a serious and horrifying case, they're mostly going to follow the oath, and the evidence was so overwhelming," Coffey said.
"The defense didn't even dispute the actual guilt or innocence of the defendant, and then when you look at the magnitude, the detailed premeditation of the crime . . . it's a death penalty case."
In many federal death penalty cases, defendants can use appeal after appeal to stall an execution for 10 to 15 years. But Coffey said he doesn't think that will be the case with Tsarnaev, 21.
"Most successful death penalty appeals, believe it or not, focus on ineffective assistance of defense council," said Coffey, who served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida from 1993 to 1996.
"This defense lawyer did everything humanly imaginable and possible to save the client's life.
"The appellate options are very, very few, and I don't think the path is going to be nearly as long as it has been in some other cases."
There is no state death penalty in Massachusetts, but Tsarnaev's was a federal case. Still, the death penalty has been hotly debated in the Bay State for years and nobody has been executed in since 1947, when convicted murderers Phillip Bellino and Edward Gertson went to the electric chair.
In total, there have been 345 executions in Massachusetts since 1630, including 26 people put to death after being convicted of practicing witchcraft.
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