After deliberating for 14 hours over the course of three days, a Boston jury of seven women and five men sentenced Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 21, to death. Those present in the courtroom say Tsarnaev showed no reaction when his sentence was read.
The jury found Tsarnaev did not show remorse for his actions, and they rejected the defense argument that Tsarnaev was brainwashed by his older brother, Tamerlan, who was killed by police shortly after the bombing.
It’s unclear when, or even if, Tsarnaev will actually be executed. Boston.com reports:
With the death sentence, Tsarnaev’s case will automatically be appealed to a higher federal court. That likely begins a series of appeals that could take years to resolve.
The federal government currently has a moratorium on all executions, and has not executed a death row inmate since 2003. Timothy McVeigh, convicted in the Oklahoma City bombing, was executed in 2001 after spending four years on federal death row.
Tsarnaev’s death sentence also comes in spite of the opinion of Boston residents, who overwhelmingly supported assigning Tsarnaev life in prison, as well as the advocacy of death penalty.
This is the first time in the post 9/11 era that a federal jury has sentenced a terrorist to death, according to Kevin McNally, director of the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project.
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