Reuters
After 14-and-a-half hours of deliberations, a jury has decided that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was found guilty of all 30 counts related to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, will receive the death penalty. Tsarnaev was convicted on April 8 of plotting and executing the bombings with his brother, Tamerlan. The conviction marks the first time in the post-September 11 era in which a terrorist has been sentenced to death by a federal jury.
"Your service in this case has been the very antithesis of mob law," judge George A. O’Toole Jr. told the jurors before letting them go. "On behalf of a community seriously aggrieved, you have demonstrated...men and women...can make careful, rational, and solemn judgments."
In this phase of his trial, the jury had to decide whether to award him life in prison or the death penalty on multiple counts. Some family members of the bombing's victims and several of the survivors had advocated for life in prison, because such a verdict would have spared them the lengthy appeals process that comes with a death penalty verdict. A willingness to impose the death penalty if the prosecution met a certain burden of proof was a requirement for jurors, however, and the jury sentenced him to death on six counts.