BOSTON: A US court has given death sentence to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for his role in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings.
The court hearing in the case on Friday lasted for more than 14 hours to choose death rather than life imprisonment for the 21-year-old college student of Chechen descent.
The death penalty decision on six of 17 counts handed a stinging defeat to the defense, who argued for a “lost kid” who would never have committed such horrors without being manipulated by his older brother.
The double bombing carried out by the brothers killed three people and wounded 264 others, including 17 who lost limbs, near the finish line at the northeastern city’s popular marathon.
Tsarnaev went on the run and was arrested four days later, hiding and injured in a grounded boat on which he had scrawled a bloody message defending the attacks as a means to avenge US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He showed no emotion as the court clerk took 20 minutes to read out the verdict form that culminated in the death penalty verdict. He stood hands clasped before him, wearing an open-necked shirt and a dark blazer.
The decision caps a 12-week trial that relived the horror of the attacks through grisly videos and heartbreaking testimony from those who lost limbs and loved ones.
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch called the sentence a “fitting punishment,” while prosecutors and law enforcement in Boston said they were satisfied, but urged commemoration rather than celebration.
The death sentence was possible only under federal law. The state of Massachusetts outlawed capital punishment in 1947 and opinion polls had suggested residents favored a life sentence for Tsarnaev.
