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Jurors found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty of all 30 charges in the Boston marathon bombing which killed three people and wounded 260 others two years ago.
The same jury will now enter a second phase of the trial to decide whether Tsarnaev should receive the death penalty.
Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan detonated two pressure cooker bombs at the finish line of the marathon in 2013. The bombing set off panic in Boston and a week-long manhunt for the brothers, during which MIT police officer Sean Collier was shot and killed.
The manhunt ended in a police chase and shoot-out in Watertown, a nearby city, where Tamerlan was killed when Dzkhokhar hit him in a stolen SUV. Dzhokhar was found the next day hiding in a covered boat.
Dzhokhar and Tamerlan are ethnically Chechen and Muslim and emigrated to the U.S. as children with their family. The indictment for the trial states that the brothers’ involvement with Islamic extremist principles was a factor in the attack.
The defense did not dispute that Tsarnaev was involved in the bombings, but instead that he was not a co-conspirator and was led into participation by his older brother.
It will be a challenge for defense lawyer Judy Clark to convince the jury to empathize with her client in the next stage of the trial, said WGBH reporter Adam Reilly, who has been covering the trial.
"I think this emphatic set of guilty findings today by the jury might lead Tsarnaev’s team to think if he wants to plead for mercy in some way and express contrition, that may be their only shot at sparing his life,” he said.
Warm up questions
- What do you know about the Boston marathon bombing?
- What does it mean to have a fair trial?
- What is the death penalty and who decides whether a criminal should be put to death?
Critical thinking questions
- How are juries selected? Why do you think it was difficult to find jurors for this trial?
- People in the courtroom have reported that Tsarnaev’s demeanor seems “cocky.” How do you think this affects the jury’s perception of him? How could this influence the verdict?
- Do you think Tsarnaev will face the death penalty? Why or why not?
