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 After deliberating for 15 hours, the federal jury chose death by
lethal injection for Tsarnaev, 21, over its only other option: life
in prison without possibility of release.
The same jury found Tsarnaev guilty last month of placing a pair of
homemade pressure-cooker bombs on April 15, 2013, as well as fatally
shooting a policeman. The bombing was one of the highest-profile
attacks on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.
Tsarnaev, dressed in a dark sport coat and light-colored shirt,
stood quietly as the sentence was read, remaining expressionless as
he had throughout most of the trial.
During 10 weeks of testimony, jurors heard from about 150 witnesses,
including people whose legs were torn off by the shrapnel-filled
bombs. William Richard, the father of bombing victim Martin Richard,
described the decision to leave his 8-year-old son to die of his
wounds so that he could save the life of his daughter, Jane, who
lost a leg but survived.
 Prosecutors described Tsarnaev, who is an ethnic Chechen, as an
adherent of al Qaeda's militant Islamist views who carried out the
attack as an act of retribution for U.S. military campaigns in
Muslim-majority countries.
The jury's decision does not mean Tsarnaev will face imminent death.
Defense attorneys are likely to appeal the sentence, a process that
can stretch out for many years.
"I know that there is still a long road ahead," said survivor Karen
Brassard, whose left leg was badly injured in the attack. "There are
going to be many, many dates ahead. But today we can take a breath,
and actually breathe again," she told reporters.
An appeal could focus on a number of issues, including the court's
denial of a defense plea to move the trial out of Boston or refusal
to challenge the graphic photos and videos that the jury saw of the
bombs' detonation and the severe wounds they inflicted.
Prosecutors do have a burden of proof to show that people died, but
the appeal argument would be that there is a balance to be struck
and they went over that line," said David Weinstein, an attorney in
private practice who in prior jobs as a state and federal prosecutor
brought death-penalty cases.
DEATH PENALTY CONTROVERSIAL IN MASSACHUSETTS
The death penalty remains highly controversial in Massachusetts,
which has not put anyone to death in almost 70 years and which
abolished capital punishment for state crimes in 1984. Tsarnaev was
tried under federal law, which allows for lethal injection as a
punishment.
Polls had shown that a majority of Boston-area residents opposed
executing Tsarnaev.
 Opponents included Martin Richard's parents, who said in an open
letter to the Justice Department last month that they wanted
Tsarnaev to face life in prison rather getting a death sentence that
would likely lead to years of appeals, keep the defendant in the
spotlight and prevent them from trying to rebuild their lives.
A lengthy appellate process, an effective moratorium on federal
executions and declining support among Americans for capital
punishment all suggest that Tsarnaev’s death is far from a sure
thing, according to death penalty experts. Instead, it may end as a
purely symbolic judgment.
"With every passing year, the likelihood of execution will
diminish," said Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University
who has studied capital punishment."
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Just three of the 74 people sentenced to death in the United States
for federal crimes since 1988 have been executed. The first was
Timothy McVeigh, put to death in June 2001 for killing 168 people in
his 1995 attack on the federal government office building in
Oklahoma City.
Other people convicted of attacks labeled as terrorist by the U.S.
government, including 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and
shoe-bomber Richard Reid, drew life prison sentences.
Prosecutors focused heavily on Tsarnaev's turn to radical Islamist
views, showing the jury copies of the al Qaeda magazine article that
demonstrated how to build a pressure-cooker bomb.
"The defendant claimed to be acting on behalf of all Muslims. This
was not a religious crime," said Carmen Ortiz, the top federal
prosecutor in Boston. "It was a political crime designed to
intimidate and coerce the United States."
Tsarnaev's attorneys admitted his involvement in the attack from the
start of the trial, but argued that he was a junior partner in a
scheme hatched and run by his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan.
Tamerlan died after a gunfight with police four days after the
bombing, which ended when Dzhokhar ran him over with a stolen car.
A Roman Catholic nun who is a prominent opponent of the death
penalty, Sister Helen Prejean, testified for the defense she had met
with Tsarnaev and he told her "no one deserves to suffer" as his
victims had. Prejean, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, said she believed
he was "genuinely sorry" for his actions.
But the jury found Tsarnaev deserved execution for six of the 17
capital charges of which he was found guilty. Those counts were the
ones tied to the bomb that he personally placed at the marathon
finish line, which killed Richard and 23-year-old Chinese exchange
student Lingzi Lu.
They did not find him deserving of death for the crimes tied to the
bomb placed by his brother, which killed 29-year-old restaurant
manager Krystle Campbell, or for the fatal shooting of Massachusetts
Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, 26.
Tsarnaev's attorney's left the courthouse without commenting to
reporters.
Tsarnaev himself was impassive throughout the trial, and did not
testify in his own defense.
(Additional reporting by Richard Valdmanis and Joseph Ax; Editing by
Jonathan Oatis and Frances Kerry)
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