Today (May 15), a jury in a Boston federal courthouse sentenced the convicted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death, according to ABC News.
Last month, the same jury composed of five men and seven women convicted Tsarnaev on each of the 30 related counts related to the fateful bombing that transpired on April 15, 2013. When Dzhokhar and his now deceased brother Tamerlan, detonated twin explosives close to the marathon's finish line, three people were killed including an 8-year old, and an additional 260 people were injured. Their wrath was not confined to just that day, three days later, MIT officer, Sean Collier was murdered by the siblings.
Four days after the initial marathon explosions, Tamerlan Tsarnaev engaged in a shootout with police and was subsequently killed. Today the jury deemed death to be the "appropriate" penalty for six of the 14 eligible counts that Dzhkohar Tsarnaev faced.
Although, Tsarnaev claimed he would not shirk his accountability in his role in the deadly explosives, he chose to plead not guilty to the array of charges, claiming that his was working under his older brother's influence. Legal experts surmised that his defense tactic was used in order to secure a sentence of life in prison.
"To end the anguish," the parents of the slain 8 year-old, Martin Richard, took out an Op-Ed for the Boston Globe and appealed for the government to drop the death penalty and give Tsarnaev life in prison.
The Richards released the following statement, "As long as the defendant is in the spotlight, we have no choice but to live a story told on his terms, not ours," Bill and Denise Richard wrote. "The minute the defendant fades from our newspapers and TV screens is the minute we begin the process of rebuilding our lives and our family."
Source: ABC News
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