Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: jury weighs death penalty after final statements in court

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/13/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-jury-death-penalty-boston-marathon

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“An eye for an eye is not who we are” was the plea from the defence attorneys of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as they made one final attempt to save him from death.

“Even if you say that is who Jahar is,” defence attorney Judy Clarke said, using Tsarnaev’s university nickname, “that is not who we are.”

With defence and prosecution final statements completed on Tuesday afternoon, 12 jurors now hold the 21-year-old bomber’s fate in their hands.

Giving the closing statement for the government, assistant US attorney Steve Mellin focused on the impact on the lives of the victims, especially the family of eight-year-old Martin Richard, the youngest victim of the attack, who was killed at the finish line by the pipe-bomb left by the defendant.

Tsarnaev is the younger and only surviving of the two brothers who perpetrated the bomb attack on the 2013 Boston Marathon that left three dead and more than 260 injured. He was convicted in April on all 30 charges against him, including use of a weapon of mass destruction.

Related: Defence focus on 'dominant' Tamerlan in bid to save Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's life

The jury are now tasked with deciding whether to sentence him to life without possibility of parole, or death by lethal injection.

“The choice between those two alternatives is yours and yours alone to make,” said Judge George O’Toole, beginning a lengthy set of instructions to the jury.

They will have to fill out a complex 24-page form, which lists ‘gateway’ factors, and then ‘mitigating’ and ‘aggregating’ factors, though ultimately the decision to put Tsarnaev to death will come down to a gut call by the jury. A vote for death must be unanimous.

Martin Richard’s parents, Bill and Denise, were in court on Tuesday, as they have been for almost every day of the trial. They heard the government describe, again, in graphic detail, the death of their son.

“Martin will never get to play high school sports, or attend college, or form lifelong friendships,” Mellin said. “Life for the Richard family ... will never be the same again.”

The government’s focus on the Richard family is a bitter one. Bill and Denise published a front page editorial in the Boston Globe in April entreating the government to drop their case for death. But the prosecution have been implacable.

Ultimately, the question for the jury runs much deeper than simply whether the punishment fits the crime. This is the highest-profile trial of a radicalised Islamic terrorist on US soil in the post-9/11 era, and the government does not want to allow a situation where Tsarnaev could take a plea deal.

But many, including some victims, have expressed the intangible feeling that to put Tsarnaev to death would be stooping to his level, or giving him the martyrdom he desires. Massachusetts outlawed the death penalty more than three decades ago; but in order to be selected for this trial from a pool of almost 2,000 potential jurors, each juror had to show that they were ‘death-qualified’, which means they said they were at least theoretically open to the idea of sentencing someone to death.

The weight of the decision now on the 12 jurors includes the question of whether this is a place which chooses “an eye for an eye”.

For the government’s case, Mellin showed many of the most horrific pictures of the carnage caused by the bombing that have been shown during the trial. Blood pooled on Boylston Street; ruined limbs and bodies strewn across the road. “This is what terrorism looks like,” he said.

“The defendant wasn’t out just to kill innocents just to punish America,” Mellin said. “He wanted to torment them to make a political statement. He knew these bombs would make people suffer, because the murders are more terrifying and they make more of a statement this way. It makes more of a statement if you make the victims suffer in front of their parents and their friends. That’s what the defendant did to Martin Richard.”

In her closing statement, Clarke reiterated the defence’s argument that Tsarnaev’s brother Tamerlan had been the powerful leading figure, and his little brother the follower, and also said that Tsarnaev had shown potential for redemption.

“We’re asking you to choose life. Yes, even for the Boston Marathon bomber,” she said. “You might say, how can I do that? How can I ask you to choose life after all the pain he’s caused? If this crime doesn’t require the death penalty, what crime does? Why should he have the opportunity to live when he didn’t give it to others? Why shouldn’t he suffer as his victim did?

“All of those thoughts are completely understandable,” she continued. “They are driven by anger, disgust, fear, pain. Some sound like they are based in vengeance.

“There’s nothing wrong with having those questions and searching in that way, but there is something wrong in thinking that the answer will be found in imposing the sentence of death.”

Clarke said that a life sentence “ensures Jahar Tsarnaev will be locked away in a bleak environment, in bleak conditions. He will have no fame, notoriety, no media attention, and if there are those that wish to make him so, he will have no glory in stature that martyrdom will bring.

“His name will fade from headlines, from the front page, from the inside page, it will fade from the news altogether and those who so desperately no longer want to be reminded of him won’t be.”