Attorneys representing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving brother of the two siblings accused of perpetrating the Boston Marathon bombing, filed a motion on Monday with the federal court in Boston for acquittal of all counts against him.
The motion submitted that the government had “failed to introduce evidence sufficient to establish each essential element of the offences charged beyond a reasonable doubt”.
Earlier that day, the government rested its case against Tsarnaev with gruesome autopsy photos of people who died in the 2013 attack.
Tsarnaev’s lawyer said in opening statements that Tsarnaev participated in the bombings but that his older brother, Tamerlan, was the mastermind.
Tsarnaev’s lawyers will now to present their case. The defence made it clear in its opening statement that its strategy during the two-phase trial is not to win an acquittal but to save Tsarnaev from the death penalty.
Monday’s motion seemed to contradict that strategy.
Three people were killed and more than 260 were injured when two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on 15 April 2013.
Jurors heard testimony from survivors who lost limbs in the bombings and from the father of eight-year-old Martin Richard, the youngest person to be killed.
But the defence also demolished a government witness from the FBI who, during his testimony, misidentified, among other things, a picture of a mosque in Grozny, which he said was in Mecca.
