Boston marathon bomber asks for new lawyers

Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has asked a federal appeals court to appoint new lawyers to handle the appeal of his conviction and death sentence.

Tsarnaev’s lawyers filed a motion Wednesday asking the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to replace most of the lawyers who defended him during his trial. That’s a standard practice in death penalty appeals.

Tsarnaev was sentenced to death for the 2013 bombing that killed three people and injured more than 260. Tsarnaev is being held at the Supermax federal prison in Colorado.

Tsarnaev’s motion asks to replace the federal public defenders of Boston with their counterparts in New York. It also asks to appoint Boulder, Colorado, attorney Gail Johnson and to keep Judy Clarke on Tsarnaev’s legal team during the transition.