"The Supreme Court on Friday reinstated the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of helping carry out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. The vote was 6 to 3...."

The NYT reports. 

After the justices agreed to review it, the Biden administration pursued the case, United States v. Tsarnaev, No. 20-443, even though President Biden has said he will work to abolish federal executions and the Justice Department under his administration has imposed a moratorium on carrying out the federal death penalty.

Until July 2020, there had been no federal executions in 17 years. In the six months that followed, the Trump administration executed 13 inmates, more than three times as many as the federal government had put to death in the previous six decades....

Why fight for the death penalty and maintain a moratorium against it? It's valuable to preserve power, even the power that you don't currently want to use. A slightly different way to put that is: For Democrats, the best political position is to oppose Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in court — and indeed to retain the death penalty — but never to execute anyone.