BREAKING NEWS: DZHOKHAR TSARNAEV SENTENCED TO DEATH!!!
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been sentenced to death for committing the Boston Marathon bombing, one of the worst acts of terrorism to take place on U.S. soil.
The same seven-woman, five-man jury that found the 21-year-old naturalized American citizen guilty in the April 15, 2013, attack reached the verdict after deliberating for more than 14 hours over three days. The jury sentenced Tsarnaev to death on 6 of the 17 counts. The only alternative sentence was life without parole.
A death sentence required a unanimous vote from the jury members, but if they had failed to agree on it, the life sentence would have been imposed automatically.
The sentence punishes the defendant for the two homemade pressure cooker bombs packed with nails and BBs that he and his brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, detonated near the marathon's finish line. The bombing killed three people -- Martin Richard, 8, Lingzi Lu, 23, and Krystle Campbell, 29 -- and injured 264 others, more than a dozen of whom lost legs. On April 18, the brothers assassinated a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, Sean Collier, in his patrol car in a botched attempt to steal his gun.
Tamerlan died during a shootout with police in Watertown, Massachusetts, four days after the bombings. Dzhokhar was captured hours later. He was found hiding in a boat, resting on a trailer. On the side of the boat, he had scrawled a confession saying the attack was retaliation for Muslims around the world who had been killed by the United States.
This undated forensics photograph made by the FBI and presented as evidence during Tsarnaev's federal trial shows a portion of the blood-stained and bullet-marked note he wrote while hiding inside motorboat after a gunfight with police on April 19, 2013.
Deliberations began May 13, when jurors were handed a complex, 24-page verdict form covering 17 capital counts, including bombing of a public place and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. The slip asked jurors to review the crimes for aggravating and mitigating factors.
Jurors had to decide if the prosecution proved that Tsarnaev exhibited aggravating factors, such as premeditation, a lack of remorse or "an especially heinous, cruel and depraved manner" of committing the offenses. Aggravating factors are reasons that the government said Tsarnaev deserved the death penalty.
The jurors also had to consider mitigating factors, such as whether Tsarnaev "had no prior history of violent behavior" and if he "acted under the influence of his older brother," which the defense argued were reasons for life imprisonment.
“There is no just punishment for that other than death,” prosecutor Steve Mellin said during closing arguments. “His actions destroyed so many families. He and he alone is responsible for his actions.”
More than 150 witnesses testified in the trial that began 10 weeks ago. The prosecution presented a tide of evidence, including videos and photos showing Tsarnaev with a heavy backpack near the marathon's finish line, images of him taking target practice with a gun similar to the one that killed Collier and footage from an ATM camera that shows Tsarnaev withdrawing money from the account of a carjacking hostage.
The defense admitted to Tsarnaev's involvement in the attackfrom the very beginning of the trial. His lawyers' strategy has been to soften his image by portraying his older brother as the radicalized mastermind.
On April 8, the jury convicted Tsarnaev of all 30 charges stemming from the bombings and subsequent violent spree across the greater Boston area.
No comments:
Post a Comment