And now we wait.
The fate of the Boston Marathon Bomber is now in the hands of the jurors, who will decide whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will be sentenced to death.
Jurors had about 45 minutes Wednesday to begin deliberations in the death penalty phase of the trial, before breaking for the day.
US District Court Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. read them instructions, which took about 90 minutes; at that time jurors began the arduous process of reviewing a complex 24-page verdict slip.
Daniel Medwed, Northeastern University Law Professor joined Morning Edition host Bob Seay, as he has throughout the trial, to discuss what may be going through jurors minds their first full day of deliberations.
Medwed says jurors must make a number of “threshold findings" including a determination that Dzhokhar is over 18 at the time of the offense.
Medway says the verdict slip includes three Gateway Factors:
Medwed says, " jurors must find a guilty decision on at least one statutory aggravating factor, on one of the 17 capitol counts, in order to reach a verdict to sentence Tsarnaev to death. He says among those factors are that the crimes are cruel, heinous and depraved and that they involved substantial premeditation and planning and there was a vulnerable victim."
The trial has had 154 witnesses and 27 days of testimony. One other interesting point that is noteworthy, according to Medwed, is there have been two federal death penalty cases in Massachusetts, since it was reinstated in 1988.
In 2001, nurse Kristen Gilbert , who was found guilty of poisoning four patients in Northampton,was given a life sentence after six hours of deliberations. In 2003, serial killer Gary Lee Sampson was sentenced to death after ten hours of deliberations.
To listen to the entire interview between Professor Daniel Medwed and Morning Edition host Bob Seay click on the link above.
