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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Tsarnaev Convicted on All Counts|in Boston Marathon Bombing Trial

BOSTON (CN) - Jurors returned a guilty verdict Wednesday against Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for the largest terrorist attack since Sept. 11, 2001.

The jury began deliberating the 30 counts against Tsarnaev on Tuesday after a roughly month-long trial wrought with emotional testimony and horrific evidence from the bombing.

Four people were killed and more than 260 were injured, 17 of whom with amputations, from the pressure-cooker bombs that Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, left at the marathon finish line on April 15, 2013.

Hours before police apprehended Tsarnaev, then 19, he inadvertently ran over Tamerlan with the SUV they stole while police were trying to subdue the man.

Tsarnaev, a naturalized U.S. citizen who came to America with his family as refugees from Kyrgyzstan, was not charged with Tamerlan's death.

Fifteen of the 30 counts against Tsarnaev took issue with the measures that the ethnic Chechen took in his attempt to escape capture, including his murder of Sean Collier, a 27-year-old police officer with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority officer Richard Donohoe also joined the tally of those injured after his confrontation with the Tsarnaevs.

Seventeen of the 30 counts against Jahar Tsarni, as the defendant was also named in the indictment, carry the death penalty.

While the prosecution emphasized Tsarnaev's adherence to radical Islam, the defense sought to portray the former University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth student as average yet impressionable.

Rather than disputing Tsarnaev's role in the terrorist attacks, defense attorney Judy Clarke, a staunch death-penalty opponent, hoped to sway jurors that her client was a puppet in the hands of his older brother.

At the penalty phase, which could begin as early as Monday, Clarke will push to have Tsarnaev face a life sentence.

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