Boston Marathon Bomber Gets Death Row

On 15 April 2013, two bombs went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three spectators and wounding more than 260 other people.

Four days later, after a big manhunt that shut down some of the Boston area, police captured one of the bombing suspects, nineteen-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Investigators later found out that the Tsarnaevs spent part of their childhoods in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, but they lived in the United States for about a decade prior to the bombings, planned and carried out the attack on their own, and were not connected to any terrorist organizations.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was scheduled to stand trial in November 2014, and federal prosecutors announced that they would seek the death penalty.

On 15 May 2015, a federal jury sentenced Boston Marathoner Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to the death penalty. Apparently, there was no observable reaction from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is now 21. Several survivors and relatives of the victims patted tears in the courtroom.

The judgment marked the first time in the post-9/11 era that federal prosecutors have won the death penalty in a terrorism case.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could be sent to death row in Terre Haute, Indiana, but the final destination will not be known until after the judge officially sentences him in court. No sentencing date has been set yet for Tsarnaev.

The six convictions that brought Tsarnaev a death sentence all relate to the second of two bombs, which caused the explosion on Boylston Street in front of the Forum restaurant on 15 April 2013.

He was not sentenced to death for the first bomb, which was planted by his brother, Tamerlan, and he was not sentenced for the shooting death of MIT officer Sean Collier.

Tsarnaev stood with his head bowed and his hands clasped in front of him. When the jury left the courtroom for the last time, the judge said, “And so, jurors, this is it.” As U.S. marshals stepped forward and took Tsarnaev away, he gave a wry smile.

It took the court a few days to decide what to do with him. He had thirty charges against him. They were between life in prison or death, but jurors chose death.