Tsarnaev, 21, is accused of fatally shooting Massachusetts
Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier on April 18,
2013, as he and his older brother prepared to flee hours after the
FBI released pictures of the pair, calling them suspects in the
attack.
In the first five days of testimony, the full court has seen
gruesome photos and video of the injuries caused by the twin
pressure-cooker bombs that killed three people and injured 264. But
U.S. District Judge George O'Toole said on Wednesday that autopsy
photos of Collier, 27, will be shown only to the jury out of respect
for his family.
If convicted of carrying out the bombing and of killing Collier,
Tsarnaev could be sentenced to death.
Defense attorneys opened the trial last week by admitting that
Tsarnaev committed the crimes of which he is accused. They are
seeking to spare him the death penalty by demonstrating that he was
following the lead of his older brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan, who
died after a gunbattle with police following Collier's shooting.
Federal prosecutors contend that the younger Tsarnaev, who emigrated
with his family from Chechnya a decade before the attack, 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.
Collier's death marked the start of a chaotic 24 hours. The brothers
carjacked a man and hurled explosives at police during a gunbattle
that ended when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev roared off in a car, running over
and killing his brother before disappearing into a drydocked boat in
the Boston suburb of Watertown. Police found him the next evening,
after a day-long lockdown of the Boston area when hundreds of
thousands of people hid in their homes.
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The jury on Wednesday heard from MIT police dispatcher David Sacco,
who tried to reach Collier by phone and radio after getting an
emergency call about gunshot-like sounds near Collier's location on
campus.
"We didn't get any response," Sacco testified. "It became an amount
of time that wasn't comfortable."
The bombing killed restaurant manager Krystle Campbell, 29, and
graduate student Lingzi Lu, 23, as well as 8-year-old Martin
Richard.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Barber; Editing by Scott Malone)
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