A prosecutor says Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev still faces a state murder charge in the death of Massachusetts Institute of Technology police Officer Sean Collier days after the 2013 attacks.
In a statement Thursday, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan reiterated a statement from June 2013 in which she said Tsarnaev would face state charges in Collier's death after his federal death penalty trial.
Tsarnaev is now on trial for the April 2013 bombing at the marathon finish line in which three people died and more than 260 were injured.
Collier was shot days after the explosions. Tsarnaev's brother, Tamerlan, died later after a shootout with police.
Ryan says her office's investigation into the shootout that gravely wounded transit Officer Richard Donohue should be complete within two months.
Meanwhile, during the 10th day of Marathon Bomb Trial, the focus was on Laurel Street in Watertown—where the Tsarnaev brothers battled police and Dzhokhar Tsaranev ran over his older brother Tamerlan as he fled.
To succeed in this trial, Dzhokhar's attorneys have to highlight anything they can that makes their client look even slightly sympathetic. On Thursday—they had precious little to work with.
The prosecution described the remnants of several explosives built by the Tsarnaevs and detonated at the scene—and the damage those bombs inflicted on nearby homes.
One especially chilling detail: a metal pressure cooker lid that came to rest inside a children’s hockey goal—next to some golf balls and a soccer ball. Also found on location and shown in court: a remote transmitter used as a detonator.
The Tsarnaev trial broke for lunch Thursday after lengthy, occasionally confusing testimony about the contents of a laptop computer allegedly used by Dzhokhar — and discovered in the New Bedford apartment of friends of his after the marathon bombings.
There were multiple references to radical Islamist materials found on the laptop.
But the government focused less on the content of the materials than on the process by which computer experts working for the government identified them.
The net result was both tantalizing and disorienting—and at one point, even prosecutor Aloke Chakravarty seemed a bit befuddled.
After lunch there was damaging testimony for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense team.
A prosecution witness specializing in computer forensics described a number of incendiary texts found on a laptop computer used by Tsarnaev—including sermons by the radical cleric Anwar Al Awlaki and a full set of issues of the Al Qaeda magazine Inspire, featuring an article titled: “Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom.”
The defense has objected a few times to the introduction of this evidence—and promptly been overruled.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could face the death penalty if convicted of the federal charges.
