CONVICTED BOSTON MARATHON bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been sentenced to die by lethal injection.
His head was down slightly and his hands were folded in front of him as the death sentence was handed down.
The defense asked that the jury be polled, and each confirmed that the verdict represented his or her decision.
Those counts were:
The decision in the penalty phase of Tsarnaev’s trial came after just over 14 hours of deliberations.
The judge praised the jurors, and commended Tsarnaev himself for their conduct in court.
Tsarnaev was convicted last month of all 30 federal charges against him, 17 of which carried the possibility of the death penalty.
The jury only needed to unanimously agree that one of them should, in this case.
In the end, the death penalty was agreed on for six counts:
Three people were killed and more than 260 were injured when two pressure-cooker bombs packed with shrapnel exploded near the marathon finish line April 15, 2013.
Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, also killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer days later.
Tsarnaev’s lawyer, renowned death penalty specialist Judy Clarke, admitted from the beginning that he participated in the bombings, bluntly telling jurors in her opening statement: “It was him.”
But the defense sought to show that most of the blame for the attack fell on his radicalized older brother, Tamerlan, who wanted to punish the U.S. for its actions in Muslim countries.
They said Dzhokhar was an impressionable 19-year-old who fell under the influence of a brother he admired.
Prosecutors portrayed Tsarnaev as an equal partner in the attack, saying he was so heartless he put a bomb behind a group of children, killing an 8-year-old boy.
Reacting to the verdict, Boston’s Irish-American mayor Marty Walsh said he hoped the decision would bring “closure.”
I hope this verdict provides a small amount of closure to the survivors, families, and all impacted by the violent and tragic events surrounding the 2013 Boston Marathon.
We will forever remember and honour those who lost their lives and were affected by those senseless acts of violence on our City.
Contains reporting from the Associated Press.
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