Lawyers representing Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev petitioned a judge on Tuesday to grant him a new trial.

Earlier this year, Tsarnaev was found guilty of 30 charges and sentenced to death for his role in the Boston bombings on April 15, 2013, which killed four people and wounded 264 others. A jury then sentenced the 22-year-old terrorist to death in May.

However, his defense team is now asking for a judge for a new trial based on a Supreme Court decision that found that a U.S. law tightening sentences for crimes committed while in possession of a gun was overly broad. According to his attorneys, Tsarnaev's conviction and sentence were tainted by the law, which affected 15 of the 30 criminal counts he faced, reports The Associated Press. The defense also argued that those counts likely influenced jurors as they were deciding his fate. As a result, Tsarnaev should receive a new trial and sentencing hearing, they say.

"It's really impossible to unpack what weight that (ruling) might have had on the jury's deliberations, in their weighing of aggravating and mitigating factors," defense attorney William Fick said, according to Reuters. "It requires a redo of the entire sentencing proceeding."

On the other hand, federal prosecutors called the relevance of the argument into question.

"There is absolutely no reason to believe ... the result would have been any different," had the charges had no reference that Tsarnaev and his older brother were in possession of a handgun during the attack, said Assistant U.S. Attorney William Weinreb.

U.S. District Judge George O'Toole did not issue a ruling on the motion.

Tsarnaev, who is being held at the "Supermax" high-security prison in Florence, Colorado, did not come to court on Tuesday.

His older brother, Tamerlan, who spearheaded the 2013 attack, died three days after the blasts during a shootout with police.