Jury weighing Boston bomber's fate to hear of victims' suffering

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[April 23, 2015]  By Elizabeth Barber
 
 BOSTON (Reuters) - Jurors hearing the trial of convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are expected to hear more emotional testimony on Thursday about the deadly 2013 attack's toll on its victims and their families.

Tsarnaev, a 21-year-old ethnic Chechen, early this month was found guilty of killing three people and injuring 264 in the April 15, 2013, attack, as well as fatally shooting a police officer three days later as he and his brother prepared to flee the city.

In making their case that jurors should sentence the defendant to death, federal prosecutors have called a series of witnesses to describe the permanent gaps in their lives after the loss of their loved ones. Eight-year-old Martin Richard, 23-year-old Chinese graduate student Lingzi Lu and 29-year-old restaurant manager Krystle Campbell were killed in the bombings, while Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier was shot to death in his police cruiser.

Prosecutors have said that Tsarnaev read and followed bomb-making instructions found in al Qaeda's "Inspire" magazine and left a note suggesting the attack was an act of retribution for U.S. military campaigns in Muslim-dominated countries.

Defense attorneys, who are due next week to begin making their case that Tsarnaev should be sentenced to life in prison rather than death, are expected to argue that 26-year-old Tamerlan was the driving force behind the attack, with Dzhokhar playing a secondary role.

Tamerlan died following a gunfight with police hours after Collier's murder.

In the second day of the sentencing phase of Tsarnaev's trial, jurors heard from Collier's brother and father, who said that even as a kid Collier couldn't wait to have a police cruiser like the ones he admired pulling over speeding cars.

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"He was a cop from an early age," said Joseph Rogers, Collier's stepfather.

Jinyan Zhao, Lu's aunt, told jurors her niece was a plucky and happy young woman who feared little, except the dark, when she left her Chinese hometown to get an education in Boston.

"She told me, 'Oh, I can't wait for how pretty Boston is going to be'," Zhao testified.

Lu's parents, who Zhao said were too distraught at the loss of their only child to leave China to testify, buried their daughter in Boston in a pink bridal gown and tiara.

Jurors also heard from two people wounded in the attacks. Seventeen of those injured by the bombs lost legs.

(Editing by Scott Malone and James Dalgleish)

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