U.S. to seek death penalty for Boston Marathon bomb suspect

Federal prosecutors announced Thursday that they will seek the death penalty for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should a jury convict him on charges related to the April attack.

Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in the subsequent manhunt following the bombing, are accused of using homemade explosives that killed three people and injured more than 200 near the finish line of the marathon. A security officer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology was killed three days later.
Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty to all 30 charges , ranging from carjacking to use of a weapon of mass destruction.

A trial date has not been set, but a court hearing will take place on Feb. 12.

Federal executions are rare. Timothy McVeigh was put to death in a federal execution in 2001 for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The last federal execution was in 2003.

H/T Sarah Sheffer