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Rediff.com  » News » Jury finds Tsarnaev guilty of 2013 Boston Marathon bombings

Jury finds Tsarnaev guilty of 2013 Boston Marathon bombings

April 09, 2015 01:03 IST
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A United States jury on Wednesday found Dzokhar Tsarnaev guilty of killing three people and injuring 264 in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, as well as fatally shooting a police officer four days later.

The 12-person jury took a day-and-a-half to find Tsarnaev, 21, guilty of all 30 counts against him, with 17 of the charges carrying the death penalty.

Jurors spent just over 11 hours evaluating Tsarnaev’s guilt in two days of deliberations, following 16 days of testimony.

The same U.S. District Court jury will now decide whether to sentence him to death or life in prison without possibility of parole.

Tsarnaev silently looked down, occasionally fidgeting, as the 32-page verdict was read.

The courtroom was packed with survivors of the attack, the parents of 8-year-old Martin Richard, the youngest fatality, and law enforcement officials, including former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis.

The Muslim immigrant of Chechen descent, who took US citizenship in 2012, was dressed in a blue sweater and dark blazer.

Tsarnaev was arrested four days later, hiding and injured in a boat on which he had scrawled a bloody message apparently justifying the attacks to avenge the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Defence lawyers began the trial by admitting that Tsarnaev carried out the April 15, 2013, bombing but said he did so at the bidding of his older brother Tamerlan, 26, who died following a gunfight with police in Watertown, Massachusetts.

Prosecutors laid out evidence that the defendant, an ethnic Chechen who immigrated from Russia a decade before the attack, had read and listened to jihadist materials, and wrote a note in the boat where he was found hiding suggesting the bombing was an act of retribution for US military campaigns in Muslim-dominated countries.

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