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 Following closing statements, the same jury that last month found
the 21-year-old ethnic Chechen guilty of killing three people and
injuring 264 in one of the highest-profile attacks on U.S. soil
since Sept. 11, 2001 will begin deliberations on Tsarnaev's fate.
The two sides have painted sharply contrasting portraits of the
convicted bomber, who has been a subdued, stoic presence in Boston's
federal courthouse since the guilt phase of his trial began in early
March.
Prosecutors have portrayed Tsarnaev, who immigrated to the United
States from Russia a decade before the attack, as an adherent of al
Qaeda's militant Islamic ideology who wanted to "punish America"
with a homemade pair of pressure-cooker bombs on April 15, 2013.
During the sentencing phase of his trial, they called witnesses
including people whose legs were torn off by the bombs and a trauma
surgeon who worked on some of the people killed by the blasts.
Defense attorneys, meanwhile, described Tsarnaev as an adrift
teenager under the spell of his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, who
they contend was the architect and driving force behind the bombing
and the murder three days later of a police officer.
Tamerlan died in the chaotic hours that followed that slaying, after
a gunfight with police that ended when a fleeing Dzhokhar
inadvertently ran him over with a car.
Tsarnaev's lawyers over the past week called witnesses including
some of his Russian family members, who remembered him as a beloved
child, and a Roman Catholic nun and well-known death penalty
opponent who said she believed Tsarnaev was "genuinely sorry" for
the pain the attack caused.
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The jury heard from about 150 witnesses through the trials' two
phases but never through Tsarnaev himself, who sat quietly and
showed no emotion, other than a brief moment last week when he
dabbed at his eyes when his 64-year-old aunt broke down in tears on
the witness stand and was unable to testify.
The death penalty remains unpopular in Massachusetts, where it is
not allowed under state law, and polls have showed more residents
are opposed to the idea of putting Tsarnaev to death than in
support.
Their ranks include the family of 8-year-old Martin Richard, the
youngest person to die in the blasts and the sister of Massachusetts
Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, who was shot
dead by the Tsarnaevs.
The other two people killed in the bombing were 23-year-old Chinese
graduate student Lingzi Lu and 29-year-old restaurant manager
Krystle Campbell.
(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Bernard Orr)
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