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Dzhokhar Tsarnaev convicted in Boston Marathon bombing

 
In a courtroom sketch, defense attorney Judy Clarke is depicted addressing the jury as defendant Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, right, sits during closing arguments Monday at Tsarnaev's federal death penalty trial in Boston. Tsarnaev was charged with conspiring with his brother to place two bombs near the Boston Marathon finish line in April 2013, killing three and injuring more than 260 people. [Associated Press]
In a courtroom sketch, defense attorney Judy Clarke is depicted addressing the jury as defendant Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, right, sits during closing arguments Monday at Tsarnaev's federal death penalty trial in Boston. Tsarnaev was charged with conspiring with his brother to place two bombs near the Boston Marathon finish line in April 2013, killing three and injuring more than 260 people. [Associated Press]
Published April 9, 2015

BOSTON — After 11 hours of deliberations over two days, a federal jury on Wednesday found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 21, a failing college student and the youngest child in a dispersed Russian immigrant family, guilty of the 2013 bombings at the Boston Marathon, the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The bombings almost two years ago transformed one of the world's most prestigious road races on a glorious spring afternoon into a scene of carnage with bodies strewn across Boylston Street, giving the nation a horrifying glimpse into the consequences of homegrown, self-taught terrorism. The bombs, planted in retaliation for U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, killed three spectators, blew the limbs off 17 others and wounded 240 more, leaving many with life-altering injuries.

Tsarnaev and his lawyers remained standing as the verdict was read. As a court officer read the verdict form, Tsarnaev held his hands clasped in front of him. To his immediate left, one of his lawyers, Judy Clarke, turned the pages of a copy of the verdict form on the table in front of them, and Tsarnaev looked down at the pages of the form while each page of the verdict was read. Tsarnaev was found guilty of all 30 charges against him. The verdict sets the stage for a second, more contentious phase of the trial in which the same jury will decide whether to sentence him to life in prison or death.

The courtroom was packed with survivors and victims' families, many of whom had testified against him.

There was little doubt that the jury would find Tsarnaev guilty of most charges; his lawyers have admitted that he had been involved in the bombings, and they put on a minimal defense, calling four witnesses who testified for five hours. The government, by contrast, called 92 witnesses over 15 days.

Still, in the first phase of the trial, the defense laid the groundwork for the sentencing phase, casting their client as subordinate to his older brother, Tamerlan, and less culpable for the crimes. The defense team's goal now is to explain mitigating factors in hopes that jurors will sentence Tsarnaev to life in prison.

After the verdict was read, Judge George O'Toole Jr. told the jurors that the case would now proceed to a second, penalty phase that could begin as early as next week.

He cautioned the jurors that they were still "an active jury, subject to your oath," and to not discuss the case with anyone.

Prosecutors said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, then 19, was a full and equal partner with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, in carrying out the attack. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, repeatedly faced with choices, never went back on the plan, prosecutors said, even when Tamerlan Tsarnaev was not around. This was especially evident when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding in a boat by himself and scrawled jihadi messages.

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"These were deliberate choices, these were political choices," Aloke Chakravarty, an assistant U.S. attorney, told the jurors in his closing arguments Monday. "An eye for eye, you kill us, we kill you, that's what he said and that's what he did."

"This was a cold, calculated terrorist act," Chakravarty said. "This was intentional. It was bloodthirsty. It was to make a point. It was to tell America that 'We will not be terrorized by you anymore — we will terrorize you.' "

The defense, while conceding Tsarnaev's involvement, cast him as a misguided adolescent led by the domineering and malevolent Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was obsessed with violent jihad and who died after a shootout with police.

"We don't deny that Jahar fully participated in the events," Clarke, the lead defense lawyer, told the jury in her closing arguments, using his Americanized nickname. "But if not for Tamerlan, it would not have happened."

Still, she never pretended that Tsarnaev was not guilty, and all but asked for a guilty verdict in her closing. "When you go back to the jury room, we're not asking you to go easy on Jahar," she said. "The horrific acts that we've heard about, the death, destruction and devastation that we've heard about, deserve to be condemned, and the time is now."

But she did ask jurors to keep their minds open in the sentencing phase.

The defense hopes to present mitigating circumstances that show him as less culpable than his brother. It will flesh out details of Tsarnaev's life and family history, which includes his forebears being expelled by Stalin from Chechnya in 1944 and ending up in Kyrgyzstan. His family settled in Cambridge, Mass., in 2002. As his parents divorced and returned to Russia, Tsarnaev, who became a U.S. citizen on Sept. 11, 2012, fell increasingly under the sway of his older brother.

Just as defense lawyers seek to impress the jurors with the reasons they should spare Tsarnaev's life, the prosecution will impress upon them the consequences of his murderous actions. Survivors of the blasts and the families of victims are expected to testify in this next phase, as they did in the first, but this time detailing the physical and emotional effects of the bomb blasts on their lives. Others are expected to discuss how the crime gripped the Boston region in fear for five days.

On Monday, April 15, 2013, the Tsarnaev brothers set off two pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line of the marathon. The first bomb, set by Tamerlan Tsarnaev, killed Krystle Campbell, 29, a restaurant manager who was watching her boyfriend run the marathon. The second bomb, set by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, killed Lu Lingzi, 23, a graduate student from China studying at Boston University, and Martin Richard, 8, who was watching the race with his family; his younger sister, Jane, lost a leg.

As they tried to flee Boston, the brothers also killed Sean Collier, 27, an MIT police officer, in an unsuccessful attempt to steal his gun, shooting him in the head at point-blank range, twice in the side of the head and once between the eyes.