Around 4 p.m., everyone in the court stood as the jury foreperson was asked by the judge to read the decision reached by all seven women and five men. They were then polled one-by-one, in their own struggling, sometimes tear-filled voices, and each juror agreed aloud with the death sentence they had just imposed on 21-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Two years and one month ago, Tsarnaev barely escaped with his life when the dry-docked boat he was hiding in in Watertown came under a barrage of police gunfire. I was in the neighborhood about six blocks away as police carried out the assault and the sounds of gunfire were deafening. I asked law enforcement officials at a press conference later that evening at the Arsenal Mall if they were actually trying to take Tsarnaev alive. One official reacted incredulously to the question, but the boat was filled with bullet holes and many learned observers agreed that is was a matter of luck that the Marathon bomber was not killed that night.
The government wanted to give Tsarnaev his day in court and to provide justice for victims. But survivors, and Bostonians in general, also wanted the killer to suffer for his crimes. Many wanted revenge.
I was present during Tsarnaev’s capture and at his arraignment. I attended the trials of the “friends of Tsarnaev” in 2014 and Tsarnaev’s pretrial last year. I have followed this case from the time shortly after the bombs went off that left Boylston street streaked in crimson red and acrid smoke lingering in the air to the day he was sentenced to die.
At times it was difficult not to feel overcome by the details of so much loss, especially the excruciating death of 8-year-old Martin Richard. His sister lost a leg, his mom lost vision and his father lost his hearing. It felt that with Martin’s death, we as a city and a society collectively lost a son.
The defense team tried to humanize the man responsible. And as I sat in the courtroom listening to the testimony, I believe they succeeded in painting a picture of a once innocent boy, loved by his friends and teachers, someone who lived with a mentally ill father, a loving but unstable mom — whose descent into religious fanaticism contrasted greatly with her secular lifestyle in the Caucasus — and the impact of a brother who he both loved and feared.
Tsarnaev showed no emotion throughout the trail except the tear or two he wiped from his eyes when his aunt from the Caucasus sobbed uncontrollably as she took the witness stand. But I never interpreted his stoicism as aloofness or swagger. I believe he was resigned to whatever fate awaited him and that decision was in the hands of the jury.
I confess to being surprised by the jury’s decision, which came after more than 14 hours of deliberating over a 24-page document. The jury agreed that the lives of Martin Richard, Lingzi Lu, Krystle Campbell and Sean Collier — and the many limbs lost and bodies shattered — merited more than life imprisonment.
What was not surprising was that jurors did not buy the argument by the defense team that Tsarnaev’s actions were guided by his brother. There was little chance that in a society such as ours, which is philosophically invested in the “Objectivist” view that our actions are own, could outweigh the “Tamerlan influenced his decision to kill” line of defense.
Multiple factors may have played into the decision by Tsarnaev to leave a bomb in the midst of children cheering runners as they headed toward the finish line. But in the final analysis, the seven women and five men comprising the “death-qualified” jury concluded that the 21-year-old Chechen immigrant was individually responsible.
Now comes years of appeals and a steady stream of headlines about the Boston Marathon bomber, and with them the burden that many thought was lifted with this decision will likely replay in the minds of the victims for many years to come.
