“The essence of terror.”
That is how federal prosecutors described the actions of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, as the government made its opening statement at the start of the penalty phase of his trial.
Earlier in April, the jury at a federal courthouse in Boston found Tsarnaev guilty on all 30 terrorism charges relating to the 2013 bomb attack on the Boston Marathon. Seventeen of those charges carry a possible death penalty.
The attack left three dead and more than 260 injured. Tsarnaev was also convicted on counts relating to the events of subsequent manhunt and shootout, and the death of MIT police officer Sean Collier.
Now, in the penalty phase, the same jury will hear new evidence from both prosecution and defence over the next several weeks. Then, they must decide whether to sentence Tsarnaev to death by lethal injection, or life in prison.
A vote for death must be unanimous; if even a single juror holds out against execution, the sentence cannot be given.
Giving the opening statement in the government’s pitch for death, assistant US attorney Nadine Pellegrini appealed to jurors by focusing on Tsarnaev’s victims. “Their families had every right to expect that they would live out their lives and realise [their] potential,” she said.
“You know how Krystle Campbell, Linxi Lu, Martin Richards and Sean Collier died. Now you need to know how they lived. You need to know and understand why their lives mattered.”
Pellegrini adopted a convention that until now only the defence had followed; referring to Tsarnaev by his university nickname, “Jahar”.
“Jahar Tsarnaev took them all away in the most brutal and painful way possible,” she said, gesturing to easels holding large pictures of the four victims. “They were all beautiful, and they are now gone.
Throughout the opening statement, as he has during most of the trial, Tsarnaev remained impassive, gazing down at the desk. “Whether Jahar was radicalised by his brother; by [radical cleric] Anwar al-Awlaki; by [al-Qaida magazine] Inspire, the origins don’t matter,” Pellegrini said. “His actions do.”
On Friday, Bill and Denise Richard – Martin Richard’s parents – published a front-page opinion piece in the Boston Globe, asking the government to drop its requests for the death penalty.
On Tuesday, as the government made its case for death in front of a picture of their son, Bill was in the courtroom. He has been there for almost every day of the trial so far.
At the end of her statement, Pellegrini revealed a picture of Tsarnaev giving the finger to a security camera. Taken when he was in custody, it was the first time the photograph has been shown publicly.
Instructing the jury, Judge George O’Toole explained that their duty was to balance “aggravating factors” and “mitigating factors” in deciding whether to vote for a death sentence or life.
“This is not a mechanical process,” he stressed. “[The factors] should be considered qualitatively.”
Tsarnaev’s defence elected not to follow the prosecution with their opening statement; instead, they will give their opening statement when the prosecution has finished laying out its case. They are expected to portray Tsarnaev as in thrall to his elder brother Tamerlan.
