BOSTON (CN) - The month-long trial to decide whether to execute the Boston Marathon bomber ended with more than four hours of closing arguments, as the jury returns to deliberate Thursday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Mellin had brought theatrics and a black backpack with him to the podium Wednesday.
"I want to start back on Boylston Street, back where the carnage began," he said as he casually flung the bag off his shoulder and underneath an easel that propped up a large picture of Boylston Street right before the bombings. The backpack landed with an audible clunk, as if it contained a homemade bomb.
"The defendant's goal was to murder and mutilate. He wanted to murder as many people as possible. He placed the bomb approximately 4 feet behind a row of children. Killing innocents was the whole point: the more vulnerable and unsuspecting the victim, the more terrifying the murder."
Just as in the trial that ended with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's conviction on all 30 counts for the April 14, 2013, attacks, Mellin never called "the defendant" by his name in his closing statement.
The penalty phase of 21-year-old Tsarnaev's trial began in the wake of another Marathon Monday, two years almost to the day of the attacks he carried out with his older brother, Tamerlan, a fellow Kyrgyzstan refugee who died violently in the days after the bombings.
Dressed in dark suit and bright blue tie, Mellin next showed the court images of Boylston Street after the bombs went off. The street was drenched in blood, the air clouded with smoke, and people were sprawled on the ground, missing legs and skin.
As he summarized the agony of the victims and their families, Mellin focused heavily on the Richard family.
Denise and Bill Richard's 8-year-old son Martin was the youngest of the marathon's three casualties. Denise was left blind in her left eye. Bill is now partially deaf. Their daughter Jane lost a leg.
"Bill Richard knew immediately that there was no chance for Martin," Mellin said. "His body covered by a table cloth on Boylston Street. Those are the lasting images Denise will have for the rest of her life. Life for the Richard family will never be the same. There is no just punishment for that other than death."
Mellin's voice trembled in anger as he spoke. He displayed a picture of the family, smiling and hugging each other with brightly colored conical birthday hats strapped around their chins.
"Bill had to choose between saving Jane or seeing Martin in his last moments left," he said. "Do you think that memory goes away?"
In the days after Tsarnaev's conviction, the Martins published a public plea in the Boston Globe asking prosecutors to take the death penalty off the table to spare them the pain that a drawn-out, death-row-appeals process will bring.
Mellin described the "smoke coming out of" 29-year-old Krystal Campbell's mouth as she lay dying at the marathon finish line. "Krystal was her dad's princess," the prosecutor said. "She was the light in his life. He told you she would call him every day. Now that light is out and that phone call will never come."