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Tsarnaev was convicted last month of joining his now-deceased
brother Tamerlan in bombing the race's crowded finish line on
April 15, 2013, killing 3 people and injuring 264, many of whom
had limbs ripped off in the blasts.
His lawyers are now trying to convince the jury that he should
be sentenced to life in prison without parole, not death, for
his involvement in one of the highest-profile attacks on U.S.
soil since Sept. 11, 2001.
Over the past two weeks the defense team has called more than
forty witnesses, many of whom described the young ethnic Chechen
as a mild-mannered teenager who, even as his college grades
slipped and his family fell apart, remained the kind and
well-liked youngster he had been as a child.
A long-time family friend, Elmirza Khozhugov, testified on
Wednesday that Tsarnaev "would always go along" with whatever
the older brother, Tamerlan, suggested and that Tamerlan became
deeply interested in religion, politics and conspiracy theories
in the years before the attack.
Investigators found al Qaeda propaganda on computers belonging
to both men, and a note written by Dzhokhar casting the bombing
as retribution for U.S. military campaigns in Muslim lands.
Prosecutors seeking to impose a death sentence have argued
Dzhokhar was an equal partner with Tamerlan in the attack. The
26-year-old Tamerlan was killed following a gunfight with police
three days after the bombing.
Martin Richard, 8, Chinese exchange student Lu Lingzi, 23, and
restaurant manager Krystle Campbell, 29, died in the attack. The
Tsarnaev brothers also shot dead Massachusetts Institute of
Technology police officer Sean Collier.
(Reporting by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Christian Plumb)
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