Jurors reached a verdict this Friday evening in the trial of the Boston Marathon bombing of April 15, 2013, cutting for the death penalty and not life imprisonment for Djokhar Tsarnaev, a young Muslim of Chechen origin aged 21. Three people were killed in the attack, including an 8-year-old child. 264 people were injured, including 17 amputees, when two homemade bombs exploded almost simultaneously in the crowd near the finish line.
Djokhar Tsarnaev showed no particular reaction when the verdict was read in the packed courtroom of the federal court in Boston, in the presence of many victims. He was convicted on April 8, and 17 of the 30 charges charged were punishable by death. Jurors were unanimous on six of these counts.
As a serious act of terrorism, Tsarnaev was subject to federal justice, in a state of Massachusetts which has abolished the death penalty since 1984 and where no one has been executed since 1947. But the former Minister of Justice Eric Holder had demanded the death penalty, emphasizing the particularly hateful nature of the attacks which had targeted the famous Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, which each year attracts thousands of spectators.
“Lost Child”
Federal death sentences are rare in the United States: It is the 39th since 2004. Executions are even more so: only four since 1963. But prosecutors had insisted that Djokhar Tsarnaev deserved it. He is a remorseful terrorist who deserves him for killing innocent Americans, the prosecution said at the end of the trial on Wednesday, highlighting several aggravating factors. The defense had pleaded the extenuating circumstances, asking for life imprisonment for a “lost child”, under the influence of his self-radicalized older brother Tamerlan. But only three jurors found in the verdict that he was actually under the influence of his brother.
Prosecutor Steve Mellin also recalled the bloody inscription discovered inside the boat where Tsarnaev was found, which explained that he wanted to avenge the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the innocent Muslims killed. He had refused to make a difference between the two brothers. “No remorse, no excuses. These are the words of a terrorist convinced that he did what he had to do. He found it justified to kill, maim and seriously injure the innocent, men, women and children”, said the prosecutor. “His actions deserve the death penalty”, had insisted, recalling, with supporting photos, the “appalling” suffering of the victims, the three dead, the amputees, the families who will never recover.
The defense, on the contrary, had insisted on the uprooted past of Tsarnaev, born in Kyrgyzstan, who then lived in Dagestan, before arriving in the United States at the age of 8 years. He was the youngest of four children, “invisible” in a family where his mother and older brother, whom he adored, had radicalized, and where the father was mentally ill, said lawyer Judy Clarke. Some jurors have recognized him extenuating circumstances, such as his father’s illness and his mother’s radicalization, but without influencing the verdict.
Policeman killed
They also acknowledged that Djokhar, who at the time was a student and had obtained American nationality in 2012, had no criminal record, and had friends and aunts in Russia who loved him. “Djokhar Tsanev was not the worst of the worst, and that is what the death penalty is for,” pleaded Judy Clarke, also stressing that life imprisonment in a very high security prison would avoid to make him a martyr. “In any case, he will die in prison,” she said. In addition to the three marathon deaths, he was also convicted of the death of a police officer killed three days later in his car. Jurors had a choice only between life imprisonment and capital punishment.
This verdict is the first failure for Judy Clarke, a famous lawyer who has avoided the death penalty for several notorious convicts in the United States, including the author of the attack on the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996, Eric Rudolph, the “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, and the French Zacarias Moussaoui in connection with September 11.
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