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 Tsarnaev, 21, is accused of killing three people and injuring 264
with a pair of homemade bombs at the race's crowded finish line on
April 15, 2013, as well as fatally shooting a police officer three
days later as he and his brother tried to flee the city.
Federal prosecutors contend that Tsarnaev was driven by an extremist
view of Islam and a desire to strike back at the United States in
revenge for military campaigns in Muslim-dominated countries.
Defense lawyers argue that his older brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan,
was the driving force behind the attacks and that his younger
brother followed him out of a sense of submission. Tamerlan Tsarnaev
died four days after the bombing when his younger brother
inadvertently ran him over with a car as he fleed a gunbattle with
police.
An agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Stephen Kimball,
on Monday testified that Tsarnaev, who immigrated to the United
States from Russia's restive Chechnya region a decade before the
attacks, maintained two Twitter handles in the months leading up to
the attack.
"If you have the knowledge and the inspiration all that's left is to
take action," Tsarnaev Tweeted under the handle "J_Tsar" a week
before the bombing, Kimball testified.
Two days after the blasts, he Tweeted, "I'm a stress free kind of
guy," Kimball said in U.S. District Court in Boston.
The jury has heard from 27 witnesses, including victims and
emergency workers, during the trial's first three days. That brisk
pace reflects the fact that defense lawyers, who opened their case
by acknowledging that Tsarnaev committed the crimes he is accused
of, have so far cross-examined only two witnesses.
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Defense attorneys told U.S. District Judge George O'Toole that they
did have questions for Kimball.
Also on Monday, the jury heard about Tsarnaev's movements following
the bombings, including a trip to a grocery store near his
Cambridge, Massachusetts, home, and to the gym at the University of
Massachusetts at Dartmouth, where he was a student.
The bombing killed Martin Richard, 8; Krystle Campbell, 29, and
Lingzi Lu, 23. Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer
Sean Collier, 27, was shot to death three days later.
(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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