Jury mulling death sentence for Boston bomber to hear more testimony

[April 22, 2015]  BOSTON (Reuters) - The jury that will determine whether to sentence convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death or life in prison is due to face another day of emotional testimony on Wednesday.

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 the first day of the sentencing phase of Tsarnaev's trial, the jury heard from three people badly injured by the bombs and from the father and brother of Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager who was one of the three people killed by the blasts.

Campbell's father, William, described waiting at a hospital while doctors operated on a person who they believed to be his daughter, but who turned out to be a friend of hers. It was early in the morning after the bombing when he learned his daughter had died.

"That was a real bad day," he said.

Prosecutors told jurors they would be hearing more about the lives of the other fatal victims, 8-year-old Martin Richard, 23-year-old Chinese graduate student Lingzi Lu and 26-year-old Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier.

Defense attorneys opted not to make their opening statements on Tuesday, instead planning to make them early next week when they begin to call their own slate of witnesses aimed at persuading the jury to spare their client's life.

Their argument is expected to focus on 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Dzhokhar's older brother, who died following a gunfight with police hours after Collier's slaying.

Defense attorneys have painted the elder Tsarnaev as the mastermind of the bombing with Dzhokhar following out of a sense of familial fealty rather than personal conviction.

Anticipating that argument, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nadine Pellegrini in her opening statement noted that both Tsarnaevs had read al Qaeda's "Inspire" magazine, which offered instructions in bomb making and that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev left behind a note suggesting the attack was an act of retribution for U.S. military campaigns in Muslim-dominated countries.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by James Dalgleish)

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