Jury to weigh Boston bomber's past in sentencing phase

[April 30, 2015]  By Elizabeth Barber
 
 BOSTON (Reuters) - Lawyers seeking to spare Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the death penalty will continue to argue on Thursday that he was a good young man whose life was derailed when he fell under the influence of his now-dead older brother.

Testimony began to focus on the defendant's past for the first time on Wednesday, the third day in the sentencing phase of the trial. Teachers and friends who knew him before he attacked the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, said he was a bright student who was generous, kind, and likeable.

The same jury that found the 21-year-old ethnic Chechen guilty of the worst terror attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 2001 is now tasked with deciding whether he should be sentenced to death or life in prison. The attack at the finish line of the world renowned race killed three people and injured another 264. Many had limbs ripped off in the explosions.

Tsarnaev’s attorneys have sketched for jurors how his immigrant family unraveled in the years before the bombings, chronicling how his mother and older brother, Tamerlan, became deeply interested in Islam.

They are seeking to paint Tsarnaev as a sweet kid who grew up in the wrong household, ultimately falling in with his 26-year-old brother's plan to bomb the marathon to satisfy a growing longing for violent jihad. Tamerlan was killed days after the bombing following a shootout with police.

Court is expected to open on Thursday with prosecutors cross-examining Alexa Guevara, a 21-year-old college friend of Tsarnaev who sobbed as she told jurors on Wednesday that he was a kind person who encouraged her to go to art school, liked joking around, and was more decent than other college guys.

"I really miss the person that I knew," said Guevara, when asked by the defense why she was crying.

Prosecutors pursuing a death sentence for Tsarnaev contend that he was an equal partner to his brother in the bombings. They have said that Tsarnaev lived a double life, pretending to be a typical college student while secretly watching al Qaeda propaganda online and preparing to bomb the race.

Martin Richard, 8, Chinese exchange student Lu Lingzi, 23, and restaurant manager Krystle Campbell, 29, died in the bombing. The Tsarnaev brothers shot dead Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier three days later.

(Editing by Richard Valdmanis and David Gregorio)

[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.