Eight years ago, two brothers orchestrated a horrific bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. They killed four individuals and injured hundreds of others. Soon after the bombing, law enforcement officers closed in on the brothers, killing the older one in a firefight. Ultimately, a jury convicted the surviving brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; he was sentenced to death.

Last summer, an appellate court vacated that death sentence. The U.S. Supreme Court considered the propriety of the death sentence at oral argument on Oct. 13. Specifically, the Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court to reverse the lower court's determination that the death penalty could not be imposed because the trial judge admitted evidence linking the defendant's (older, dead) brother to an unsolved triple murder.