|
 Tsarnaev was sentenced last June to death by lethal injection for
his role in the 2013 bomb attack, which killed three people and
injured more than 260.
The judge also ordered Tsarnaev to pay more than $101 million in
restitution to victims.
U.S. District Judge George O'Toole said the court had already
resolved some factors Tsarnaev's attorneys raised in seeking a new
trial, such as their argument that it was impossible to seat an
impartial jury in Boston due to intense publicity surrounding the
attack.
"There is no reason to think that if the trial had been moved to
another district, the local media in that district would not also
have given it attentive coverage," O'Toole wrote in his 37-page
ruling.
 He also noted that defense attorney Judith Clarke admitted in her
opening statements that Tsarnaev, along with his older brother
Tamerlan, carried out the attack, saying "It was him."
The defense had focused on trying to spare Tsarnaev the death
penalty, rather than prove his innocence.
The judge also rejected defense arguments that a new trial was
justified by a Supreme Court decision, reached two days after
Tsarnaev's sentencing, that a U.S. law stiffening sentences for
crimes committed while in possession of a gun was overly broad.
Tsarnaev, 22, is being held at the "Supermax" high-security prison
in Florence, Colorado, while his attorneys appeal his death
sentence. He was last seen in public on June 24, when he said he
was "sorry for the lives I have taken."
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His older brother, Tamerlan, who participated in the April 15, 2013
attack, died following a gunbattle with police three days after the
bombing.
The two were inspired by al Qaeda's militant ideology and used
instructions from a magazine produced by the group to build their
bombs, according to evidence presented at trial.
Martin Richard, 8; Chinese exchange student Lingzi Lu, 26, and
restaurant manager Krystle Campbell, 29, died in the bombing. Three
days later, the Tsarnaevs shot dead Massachusetts Institute of
Technology police officer Sean Collier, 26.
Legal wrangling over Tsarnaev's fate could play out for years or
even decades. Just three of the 74 people sentenced to death in the
United States for federal crimes since 1998 have been executed.
(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by David Gregorio)
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