Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
Dzhokhar TsarnaevReuters

The Justice Department is urging the Supreme Court to reinstate the death penalty sentences for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev that were invalidated by a lower court last year, CBS News reported on Tuesday.

In a brief filed with the Supreme Court on Monday in the dispute between the federal government and Tsarnaev, Acting Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals was wrong to vacate the capital sentences recommended by a federal jury "in one of the most important terrorism prosecutions in our nation's history" and called for the high court to reverse the lower court's decision.

"[T]he jury carefully considered each of respondent's crimes and determined that capital punishment was warranted for the horrors that he personally inflicted — setting down a shrapnel bomb in a crowd and detonating it, killing a child and a promising young student, and consigning several others 'to a lifetime of unimaginable suffering,'" Prelogar wrote in the filing, as quoted by CBS News. "That determination by 12 conscientious jurors deserves respect and reinstatement by this court."

The Supreme Court in March agreed to hear the case involving Tsarnaev after a three-judge panel of the 1st Circuit tossed out his capital sentences over issues with jurors' pretrial media exposure.

While the Justice Department under former President Donald Trump asked the justices to review the ruling in October and then-Attorney General William Barr said federal prosecutors would continue to pursue the death penalty for Tsarnaev, it was unclear whether that remained the position of the Justice Department under President Biden, who is opposed to the death penalty.

Tsarnaev, 27, was sentenced to death in 2015 for planting two home-made bombs near the finish line of the race in 2013, killing three people and injuring 264 others.

Tsarnaev was convicted in April of 2015 on 30 charges, including conspiracy and use of a weapon of mass destruction.

He has confirmed that his older brother Tamerlan was behind the 2013 attack and that he “wanted to defend Islam from attack.”

The Supreme Court will hear the case deciding Tsarnaev's fate in its next term, which begins in the fall.