Jury Sentences Boston Marathon Bomber to Death

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 21-year-old found guilty of bringing terror to the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon, has been sentenced to death in the first case of an Islamic extremist who has been condemned to execution in the United States.

Tsarnaev and his slain brother, Tamerlan, had no formal affiliation with organized terror. But authorities believe they were influenced by Islamic radicals in the Russian region of Dagestan, where their mother lives.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted April 8 of 30 charges linked to the bombings, 17 of which carried the death penalty. On Friday, a federal jury in Massachusetts agreed unanimously that he should die, pending an expected appeal — a process that could take months, or even years.

In past cases, defense attorneys and family members of victims have argued that executing terrorists only portrays them as martyrs who were felled by an infidel U.S. government. Attorneys for 9/11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui successfully used this argument during his sentencing in 2006. Moussaoui is currently serving a life sentence at the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colo.

A federal execution is a rare event. Since 2000, only three people have been executed by the United States, most notably Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. The two others, Juan Raul Garza in 2001 and Louis Jones in 2003, were found guilty in murder cases. All three were put to death at the federal corrections facility in Terre Haute, Ind.

“By Amnesty International standards, if all we had was the federal government, the United States would be an abolitionist state,” Frank Zimring, a death penalty expert at the University of California-Berkeley, told FP on Friday.

There are currently 61 inmates sitting on death row in federal prisons. Since 1927, 37 federal prisoners have been executed.

A poll in Massachusetts showed 62 percent of Bostonians wanted Tsarnaev’s life spared. Until Friday, his lawyer, Judy Clarke, had never had a client who was ordered to be executed, including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. Sister Helen Prejean, a influential death penalty opponent who was featured in the film, “Dead Man Walking,” also urged the jury not to send Tsarnaev to the lethal injection chamber. But the jury sentenced him to death on six of the 17 capital offenses.

The verdict comes as the United States deals with growing concerns about homegrown jihadist attacks inspired by the Islamic State and other extremist groups.

Earlier this month, Elton Simpson and and Nadir Soofi were killed by police after the two opened fire on an event celebrating cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in Texas. Many Muslims consider portrayals of the prophet as blasphemous. And while the two gunmen didn’t appear to have formal ties with terror groups, social media posts indicated Simpson was sympathetic to Islamic extremists. The Islamic State has claimed credit for the Texas attack, although there is nothing to indicate it was directly involved.

The Boston bombings, which killed three people and injured 264 injured on April 15, 2013, was the worst terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. The Tsarnaev brothers managed to avoid capture for days, putting Boston and its suburbs on lockdown as law enforcement pursued them.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed April 19, a day after shooting a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer during the manhunt. Hours later, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found hiding in a boat in a small town outside of Boston.

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