USA - A federal jury sentenced Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death for setting off bombs at the 2013 Boston Marathon

A federal jury sentenced Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death for setting off bombs at the 2013 Boston Marathon that killed 3 people and injured hundreds more in the worst terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001. The jury of 7 women and 5 men, which last month convicted Mr. Tsarnaev, 21, of all 30 charges against him, 17 of which carry the death penalty, took more than 14 hours to reach its decision. In reaching its decision, the jury found that Mr. Tsarnaev had shown no remorse for actions, and it rejected the defense argument that his older brother, Tamerlan, had brainwashed him into joining in the bombings. It was the 1st time a federal jury had sentenced a terrorist to death in the post-Sept. 11 era, according to Kevin McNally, director of the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project, which coordinates the defense in capital punishment cases. Prosecutors portrayed Mr. Tsarnaev, who immigrated to Cambridge, Mass., from the Russian Caucasus with his family in 2002, as a coldblooded, unrepentant jihadist who sought to kill innocent Americans in retaliation for the deaths of innocent Muslims in American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 3 people were killed outright, while 17 people lost at least 1 leg. More than 240 others sustained serious injuries, some of them life-altering. With death sentences, an appeal is all but inevitable, and the process generally takes years if not decades to play out. Of the 80 federal defendants sentenced to death since 1988, only 3, including Timothy J. McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, have been executed. Most cases are still tied up in appeal. In the rest, the sentences were vacated or the defendants died or committed suicide. The Tsarnaev verdict goes against the grain in Massachusetts, which has no death penalty for state crimes and where polls showed that residents overwhelmingly favored life in prison for Mr. Tsarnaev. Many respondents said that life in prison for one so young would be a fate worse than death, and some worried that execution would make him a martyr. But the jurors in his case had to be "death qualified" - that is, they all had to be willing to impose the death penalty to serve on the jury. So in that sense, the jury was not representative of the state. Before they could decide that Mr. Tsarnaev should receive the death penalty, the jurors had to wade through a complicated, 24-page verdict slip. On it, they had to weigh the aggravating factors that would justify his death as well as the mitigating factors, presented by the defense, that would argue for him to live. Despite that complicated process, Judge George A. O'Toole Jr. of Federal District Court, who presided in the case, told jurors that their final decision should not be based on a numerical comparison of aggravating factors to mitigating factors. Rather, he said, they should use their individual judgment and internal moral compass. The verdict is a rare defeat for Judy Clarke, the lead defense lawyer and renowned opponent of the death penalty. Ms. Clarke has represented a number of notorious defendants, including Theodore J. Kaczynski, the Unabomber; Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Park bomber; and Jared L. Loughner, who killed 6 people in an assassination attempt on Representative Gabrielle Giffords. Ms. Clarke's expertise is in negotiating deals in which her clients plead guilty in exchange for sentences of life in prison. But in this case, the government was determined to get a death sentence and rejected her overtures. Here are some statements of reaction to the sentence. Mayor Marty Walsh of Boston: “I hope this verdict provides a small amount of closure to the survivors, families, and all impacted by the violent and tragic events surrounding the 2013 Boston Marathon”. Attorney General Loretta Lynch: “We know all too well that no verdict can heal the souls of those who lost loved ones, nor the minds and bodies of those who suffered life-changing injuries from this cowardly attack. But the ultimate penalty is a fitting punishment for this horrific crime and we hope that the completion of this prosecution will bring some measure of closure to the victims and their families”. Chief John DiFava of the MIT police: “While the horror thy have endured can never be undone, I hope that the conclusion of the trial and the subsequent verdict can offer some kind of closure, no matter how small”. Tsarnaev could live a relatively long time on federal death row. That's partly because only three people have been executed in the United States since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988 after a 16-year moratorium. Timothy McVeigh and Juan Garza in 2001, and Louis Jones in 2003. Before McVeigh's execution in 2001, the federal government had not put anyone to death since 1963. Juries have handed down the death sentence in federal cases 74 times since 1988, according to the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project. In federal capital cases, juries choose death rather than life in prison about 30% of the time. There are 62 people on federal death row.