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The verdict is in for the Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and the jury has recommended a death sentence.
The jury only needed 14 hours to reach its verdict on the 17 counts where he could be sentenced to death, and found for the death penalty for six of those. The only other choice for sentencing on those charges would have been life in prison. The attack killed 3 people and injured 264 people. It was the worst attack on US soil since the attack on 9/11.
AlterNet reports:
Their only other option was life without the possibility of release in America's toughest "super-max" prison in Colorado, which some have dubbed the "Alcatraz of the Rockies".
[...] "'No remorse, no apology'. Those are the words of a terrorist convinced he has done the right thing", US assistant attorney Steven Mellin said.
[...] Judge George O'Toole will now formally sentence Tsarnaev at a hearing expected to be held later in the year.
[...] The verdict in the federal case came despite widespread local opposition to capital punishment in Massachusetts, a largely Democratic state that abolished the death penalty in 1947.
Prominent survivors, including the parents of the youngest victim Martin Richard, had also opposed the death penalty on the grounds that years of prospective appeals would dredge up their agony.
[...] Since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988, only 79 people have been sentenced to die and only three have been executed, says the Death Penalty Information Center. Three other death verdicts were turned into life sentences after new trials were granted.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday May 17 2015, @08:24PM
Not defending the defendant, but TFA notes that the jury was pre-vetted to be willing to apply the death penalty. Isn't that cheating? If the prosecution wants to use their limited strikes on that, fine but it sounds like that was in addition to the usual proceduire.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @10:53PM
People need to start lying to these fools; they're basically eliminating anyone who isn't a brain dead moron. Or, rather than directly lying, feign ignorance or avoid them.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by iwoloschin on Monday May 18 2015, @12:12AM
The jury was vetted to *not be opposed* to the death penalty, not *to be in favor of* the death penalty. These are important distinctions, because here in MA (yeah, I live a few miles away from the marathon finish line and work around the corner from where Collier was murdered) there is no death penalty for state cases. Federal cases are another matter though, and they can do whatever they want. Unfortunately, if you're trying a death penalty case in a state that has abolished the death penalty, it means that the majority of the potential jurors are outright opposed to the death penalty, so the judge *must* screen them beforehand, in order to ensure a "fair" trial (since jurors pre-opposed to a sentence cannot grant a "fair" sentence), though as you mentioned, such a screening does predispose the jury to being more susceptible to the prosecution stringing them along to a death sentence, and this prosecution did an excellent job of playing with this jury's emotions to push them towards a death sentence.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Monday May 18 2015, @12:46AM
That in itself is a distortion of the jury of one's peers. It would be the same as finding a jury "not opposed" to charges of felony jaywalking with a 30 year minimum.
The defense didn't get to pre-screen the jury for not being opposed ti jihad.
We have a defines system of jury selection that is set up to be fair to both parties, we should stick to it.