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State Charges Sought for Boston Marathon Bomber


FILE - Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is pictured in this handout photo presented as evidence by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 23, 2015.
FILE - Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is pictured in this handout photo presented as evidence by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 23, 2015.

A Massachusetts district attorney says she wants to put convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on trial on state charges of killing a college police officer, even though he already has been sentenced to death.

Marian Ryan told The Boston Globe newspaper, in a story published Saturday, that "when you come into Middlesex County and execute a police officer in the performance of his duties ... it is appropriate you should come back to Middlesex County to stand trial for that offense."

Ryan said she already had begun the process of getting Tsarnaev out of a federal penitentiary in Colorado to bring him back to Boston.

A federal judge sentenced Tsarnaev to death for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and wounded more than 260. Tsarnaev was also convicted on federal charges in connection with the shooting death of Officer Sean Collier of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Another trial would be expensive and possibly traumatic for the victims. But Ryan is considering the possibility that the death sentence could be overturned on appeal.

Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, shot and killed Collier on the MIT campus when they tried to avoid capture. Authorities think they were trying to steal Collier's gun.

Tamerlan was killed in a police shootout and the badly wounded Dzhokhar was found hiding in a boat parked in the backyard of a suburban Boston home.

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