The lawyers representing the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have made calls for him not to face the death penalty.
Attorneys put forward that Tsarnaev was unable to get a fair trial because of the judge’s “refusal” to move the case out of the city where the bombs exploded.
Tsarnaev's legal team said in a 500-page brief filed Thursday in the 1st U.S. District Court of Appeals that there were a host of other problems with the now-25-year-old's 2015 trial.
Lawyers claimed there were issues with jurors, certain testimonies from surviving victims and the defence’s “inability” to tell jurors about links between Tsarnaev's brother and an unsolved triple killing in 2011.
Extensive media coverage and the number of people in Boston impacted by the bombings were also factors raised by the legal team.
Three people were killed and more than 260 others were injured when two bombs exploded near the finish line during the marathon in 2013.
Tsarnaev was sentenced to death by lethal injection in 2015, after the jury turned down the option of him being imprisoned for life without the possibility of release.
His defence sought to save Tsarnaev's life by pinning most of the blame on his radicalised older brother.
His brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev died during a standoff with police as the pair sought to evade authorities.
