Boston bombing trial to move into first full day of testimony

[March 05, 2015]  By Scott Malone
 
 BOSTON (Reuters) - The Boston Marathon bombing trial was set to move into its first full day of testimony on Thursday, with the jury expected to hear from more people who survived the attack that killed three people and injured 264.

An attorney for defendant Dzhokhar Tsarnaev began proceedings in federal court on Wednesday with a blunt admission that her 21-year-old client had been behind the April 15, 2013, attack, as well as the fatal shooting of a police officer three days later.

The defense strategy was to focus jurors' attention on Tsarnaev's older brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan, who died when Dzhokhar ran him over days after the attack as the pair fought with police and tried to flee the city.

By painting the elder Tsarnaev as the prime mover in the attack, defense attorneys hope to persuade the jury to sentence the surviving brother to life in prison rather than the death penalty.

But even as Tsarnaev attorney Judith Clarke admitted that he had played a role in the bombing, the defense let his "not guilty" plea on a 30-count indictment stand. That means that for the next several weeks the jury will hear a detailed accounting of the bombing and its aftermath.

Federal prosecutors said their witnesses will include Stephen Silva - who they contend provided the Tsarnaev brothers with a gun they used to kill Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier three days after the bombing - and a graduate student who saw the shooting.

During the trial's first day, the jury saw graphic video of the bloody, chaotic moments following the two bomb blasts, when emergency workers rushed to apply tourniquets to dozens of wounded people.

They heard from four people injured in the blasts, including Karen McWatters, who had attended the race with her friend Krystle Campbell. She described how she crawled over hot shrapnel to her friend after both were badly injured.

"We held hands and shortly after that her hand went limp in mine, and she never spoke again," said McWatters, who lost a leg.

Campbell, 29, Chinese graduate student Lingzi Lu, 23, and 8-year-old Martin Richard died in the blasts.

McWatters was taken to the hospital with Campbell's cell phone. For days officials believed McWatters was missing and thought they were treating Campbell. The mix-up came to light when Campbell's parents came to see their daughter and found someone else in the hospital bed.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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