Jury sentences Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death
Verdict reached in penalty phase of Boston Marathon bombing trial
A federal jury sentenced Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death Friday for his part in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that left three people dead, and for the murder of an MIT police officer as he and his brother attempted their getaway.
Tsarnaev showed no emotion as he learned his fate and stood with his hands clasped in front of him, his head slightly bowed. He faces death by lethal injection.
"My mother and I think think that now he will go away and we will be able to move on," said victtim Sydney Corcoran after the verdict. "Justice. In his own words, 'an eye for an eye.'"
Corcoran nearly bled to death and her mother lost both legs.
The 21-year-old faced the death penalty or life in prison for his role in the April 15, 2013 attack in which two pressure-cooker bombs were detonated near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
It remains to be seen how quickly his execution will take place. It took authorities four years to execute Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh after his appeals were exhausted. A jury sentenced McVeigh to death in 1997. He was executed in 2001.
As a crowd gathered in front of the federal courthouse in downtown Boston, the jury went through its lengthy and complicated verdict form.
The jurors agreed with prosecutors on 11 of the 12 aggravating factors they cited and found the former college student's role in the bombing was "heinous, cruel and depraved" on eight counts.
The jury agreed with the prosecution that the bombing constituted an act of terrorism involving substantial planning and premeditation on Tsarnaev's part.
The panel also ruled as an aggravating factor the death of 8-year-old Martin Richard, the youngest victim of the bombing. The boy had gone to the marathon with his family.
As the jury announced Tsarnaev showed no remorse for what he did, he slowly rocked back and forth between his two lawyers.
The defense asked the jury to weigh more than 20 mitigating factors in pleading that he be spared death.
But only three jurors found that Tsarnaev was under the control of his older brother, Tamerlan.
The jury reached a decision in the penalty phase of the death penalty trial after 14 hours of deliberations over three days.
Tsarnaev was convicted last month of all 30 federal charges against him, 17 of which carried the possibility of the death penalty.
The 2013 bombing killed three people and injured more than 260 others. Tsarnaev was also convicted of killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer days later during a massive police manhunt for him and his brother.
The defense sought to save Tsarnaev's life by pinning most of the blame on his radicalized older brother, who died during their escape attempt.
Prosecutors portrayed Tsarnaev as an equal partner in the attack and so heartless he placed a bomb behind children.
During the trial's first phase, the jurors heard grisly and heartbreaking testimony from numerous bombing survivors who described seeing their legs blown off or watching someone next to them die.
Those killed in the bombing besides Richard were Lingzi Lu, a 23-year-old Boston University graduate student from China; Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager from Medford.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology police Officer Sean Collier was shot to death in his cruiser days later. Seventeen people lost legs in the bombings.
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."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
