A lot of people were wondering what the prosecution would do differently after moving from the guilt phase of the trial into the penalty phase. It was similar in that they primarily relied on victims to tell their stories, but the difference was the intensity and raw emotion they evoked from the people who took the stand this week.
There were some familiar names like Celeste Corcoran who lost both legs and Adrianne Haslet Davis, the ballroom dancer who lost a foot. It was not just what they said, but how they said it. Celeste: “Not a minute goes by that I am not reminded that I’m a double amputee.”
When Adrianne was asked why her husband Adam was not with her she said “because he checked himself into a mental health facility.” Adam lost “ice cream scoops” off his legs and has permanent tinnitus - a ringing in the ears that another victim, Eric Whalley, said “drives me crazy.”
Eric Whalley lost an eye. There was new video and new audio - all chilling.
Then 18-year old Gillian Reny was waiting for another family member at the finish line when the bomb went off. Gillian was blown to the ground - one leg dangling by a single vital artery. Her leg was saved but the pain has been unimaginable. Her grandfather was running a cellphone video at the moment of the explosion - the phone dropped to the ground but kept recording. You could hear children screaming, see bits of shrapnel, bb’s, and a thick flush of blond hair, surrounded in blood. Gillian was writhing on the ground.
We hadn’t heard from Steve Woolfenden whose 3-year-old son Leo was also injured. Steve was so worried about Leo he didn’t realize his own leg was blown off. When rescuers grabbed his little boy, he feared he would never see him again.
And next to him Denise Martin, huddled over 8-year-old Martin screaming, “Please Martin, Martin please.” Denise then took a second to turn to Steve and ask, “Are you ok.”
And that was the difference this week, uninterrupted tales of grief, suffering, thoughts of dying and fear that there’s more suffering to come, like Marc Fucarile who wonders if he will be able to keep his remaining leg.
Next week there will be none of this, but the prosecution hopes they’ve securely implanted those images in the brains of the jury so that no amount of “mitigating circumstances” can change what they want for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; death.
