Boston bombing trial to move into first
full day of testimony
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[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.
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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.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Mar/05/images/ads/current/graueinc_generic_sda.png) 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.
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"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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