A jury sentenced Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death Friday for the Boston Marathon bombing, sweeping aside pleas that he was just a “kid” who fell under the influence of his fanatical older brother.
Tsarnaev, 21, stood with his hands folded, his head slightly bowed, upon learning his fate, decided after 14 hours of deliberations over three days. It was the most closely watched terrorism trial in the U.S. since the Oklahoma City bombing case two decades ago.
The decision sets the stage for what could be the nation’s first execution of a terrorist in the post-9/11 era, though the case is likely to go through years of appeals. The execution would be carried out by lethal injection.
“Now he will go away and we will be able to move on. Justice. In his own words, ’an eye for an eye,’” said bombing victim Sydney Corcoran, who nearly bled to death and whose mother lost both legs.
The 12-member federal jury had to be unanimous for Tsarnaev to get the death penalty. Otherwise, he would have automatically received a sentence of life in prison without parole.
Tsarnaev’s father, Anzor Tsarnaev, reached by phone by the Associated Press in the Russian region of Dagestan, let out a deep moan upon hearing the news and hung up.
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Tsarnaev’s lawyers had no comment as they left the courtroom.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the sentence was a fitting response to the “coldly and callously perpetrated” attack on hundreds of innocent people.
“We know all too well that no verdict can heal the souls of those who lost loved ones, nor the minds and bodies of those who suffered life-changing injuries from this cowardly attack,” she said in a statement. “But the ultimate penalty is a fitting punishment for this horrific crime and we hope that the completion of this prosecution will bring some measure of closure to the victims and their families. We thank the jurors for their service, the people of Boston for their vigilance, resilience and support and the law enforcement community in Boston and throughout the country for their important work.”
Three people were killed and more than 260 wounded when two pressure-cooker bombs packed with shrapnel exploded near the finish line on April 15, 2013.
The former college student was convicted last month of all 30 federal charges against him, including use of a weapon of mass destruction and the killing of an MIT police officer during the Tsarnaev brothers’ getaway attempt. Seventeen of those charges carried the possibility of the death penalty.
Tsarnaev’s chief lawyer, death penalty specialist Judy Clarke, admitted at the very start of the trial that he participated in the bombings, bluntly telling the jury: “It was him.”
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But the defense argued that Dzhokhar was an impressionable 19-year-old who was led astray by his volatile and domineering 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, who was portrayed as the mastermind of the plot to punish the U.S. for its wars in Muslim countries.
Prosecutors depicted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as an equal partner in the attack, saying he was so coldhearted he planted a bomb on the pavement behind a group of children, killing an 8-year-old boy.
To drive home their point, prosecutors cited the message he scrawled in the dry-docked boat where he was captured: “Stop killing our innocent people and we will stop.” And they opened their case in the penalty phase with a startling photo of him giving the finger to a security camera in his jail cell months after his arrest.
“This is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev —unconcerned, unrepentant and unchanged,” prosecutor Nadine Pellegrin said.
The jurors also heard grisly and heartbreaking testimony from numerous bombing survivors who described seeing their legs blown off or watching someone next to them die.
Killed in the bombing were Lingzi Lu, a 23-year-old Boston University graduate student from China; Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager from Medford; and 8-year-old Martin Richard, who had gone to watch the marathon with his family. Massachusetts Institute of Technology police Officer Sean Collier was shot to death in his cruiser days later. Seventeen people lost legs in the bombings.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev died days after the bombing when he was shot by police and run over by Dzhokhar during a chaotic getaway attempt.
The speed with which the jury reached a decision surprised some, given that the panel had to fill out a detailed, 24-page worksheet in which the jurors tallied up the factors for and against the death penalty.
The possible aggravating factors cited by the prosecution included the cruelty of the crime, the killing of a child, the amount of carnage inflicted, and lack of remorse. The possible mitigating factors included Tsarnaev’s age, the possible influence of his brother and his turbulent, dysfunctional family.
The jury agreed with the prosecution on 11 of the 12 aggravating factors cited, including lack of remorse. In weighing possible mitigating factors, only three of the 12 jurors found he acted under the influence of his brother.
Tsarnaev did not take the stand at his trial, and he slouched in his seat through most of the case, a seemingly bored look on his face. In his only flash of emotion during the months-long case, he cried when his Russian aunt took the stand.
The only evidence of any remorse on his part in the two years since the attack came from the defense’s final witness, Sister Helen Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun and staunch death penalty opponent made famous by the movie “Dead Man Walking.”
She quoted Tsarnaev as saying of the bombing victims: “No one deserves to suffer like they did.”
Tsarnaev’s lawyers also called teachers, friends and Russian relatives who described him as a sweet and kind boy who cried during “The Lion King.” The defense called him a “good kid.”
The defense argued that sparing his life and instead sending him to the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, would be a harsh punishment and would best allow the bombing victims to move on with their lives without having to read about years of death penalty appeals.
U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. will formally impose the sentence at a later date during a hearing in which bombing victims will be allowed to speak. Tsarnaev will also be given the opportunity to address the court.
The Tsarnaevs —ethnic Chechens — lived in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan and the volatile Dagestan region, near Chechnya, before moving to the U.S. about a decade before the bombings. They settled in Cambridge, just outside Boston.
The fact that a jury had sentenced Tsarnaev to death is likely to deter some Islamic extremists from committing acts of terror in the United States, said Jeff Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University in Texas.
Some jihadists have limits and although they are willing to kill for their ideals, they are not willing to die for those ideals, Mr. Addicott said. U.S.-based supporters of the Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), are important recipients of that message, he said.
“There are thousands of people who are inspired by ISIS in this country,” he said. “I think that we should advertise this verdict and that that will be a deterrent.”
Tsarnaev appears unlikely to fight hard appeal of the death sentence, Mr. Addicott said.
“If you look at his demeanor, this guy is jihadist, and they want to die,” he said.
The convicted terrorist will get an automatic appeal because he received the death penalty. The only way he can avoid the death sentence is if a new defense team was able to find a loophole in the judge’s decisions. For example, that new defense team would have to demonstrate that the government created some error and because of that error, the death penalty should be taken off the table.
• Washington Times reporter Maggie Ybarra contributed to this article.
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