Free Republic

A panel of U.S. Circuit judges upheld a Massachusetts school district’s policy, allowing staff to use a different name and gender pronouns for a student — without notifying the child’s parents. A lawsuit filed by the parents of a middle school student was dismissed in the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The parents had brought attention to how staff at Baird Middle School in Ludlow, Massachusetts, “violated their constitutional rights” as guardians by concealing the fact that their 11-year-old daughter had asked to be identified by a different name and pronouns. The parents, Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri, argued...

The U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty sentence imposed on Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The death sentence had been tossed out earlier by a federal appeals court. “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev committed heinous crimes,” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the majority opinion. The Supreme Court on Friday reinstated the death penalty sentence imposed on Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, reversing a lower federal appeals court ruling that had voided that punishment. In its 6-3 ruling, the high court rejected arguments by Tsarnaev’s lawyers that his trial judge erred in barring certain questions to prospective jurors, and in blocking...

A man who lost his leg in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing ripped the decision of an appellate court Friday to toss the the death sentence and overturn three of the convictions of terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. “It’s ridiculous,” Marc Fucarile said when asked about the ruling on the local Boston WEEI radio show “Ordway, Merloni and Fauria.” Fucarile — who lost his right leg during the second of two finish-line explosions that killed three and left more than 260 wounded in April 2013 — said the case should be clear cut. “The guy did this. Put him to rest,” Fucarile...

BOSTON (CBS/AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday overturned the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the man convicted in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. The three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston issued the decision more than six months after arguments were heard in the case. The April 15, 2013, attack killed three people and injured more than 260 others.