A jury sentenced Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death Friday.
The jury deliberated a little more than 14 hours to reach the decision.
The April 15, 2013 bombings killed four and injured hundreds. Tsarnaev was found guilty of all 30 counts against him, that covered a range of allegations, not just the bombing itself. They included aiding and abetting his brother in the attack to carjacking. Seventeen of those charges carried the potential of the death penalty.
Tsarnaev originally pleaded not guilty on all 30 counts, but his defense admitted it was him. There was little doubt that Tsarnaev would be found guilty. The real question was whether he would get the death penalty or life in prison.
“There’s little that occurred the week of April the 15th — the bombings, the murder of officer Collier, the carjacking, the shootout in Watertown — that we dispute,” Tsarnaev’s defense attorney Judy Clarke said during opening statements March 4.
Prosecutors pointed to evidence that Tsarnaev planned the attack and was driven by anger over the U.S. actions in Muslim countries, something he wrote on the side of a boat just before being captured. They highlighted the fact that Tsarnaev put the bomb near an 8-year-old boy who was killed by the blast.
Some victims of the bombing publicly said that even though he harmed them, they did not want him to receive the death penalty.
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