Boston Bomber Trial Begins, Defense Attorney: "It Was Him"

Photo via WHDH.

The trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev began Wednesday. Tsarnaev faces 30 charges, 17 of which could bring the death penalty.

Tsarnaev is being charged in the 2013 tragedy that resulted in the deaths of three people and injured 260 others. He is also charged for allegedly shooting and killing an MIT police officer in Cambridge days after the bombings alongside his older brother Tamerlan.

The trial, in a courtroom full of victims, family members and media, began with opening statements from both Assistant U.S. Attorney William Weinreb and Judy Clarke, Tsarnaev’s defense attorney.

USA Today reported that Weinreb said 21-year-old Tsarnaev “believed the United States government is the enemy of Muslim people.”

Clarke suggested Tamerlan was the mastermind of the April 2013 attack but acknowledged that her client, then 19-year-old Dzhokhar, dropped the backpack outside The Forum and later hid in a boat in Watertown. “There’s little that we dispute,” she admitted. “It was him.”

People injured in the attack, such as dancer Heather Abbott and Marc Fucarile, sat quietly in court during the proceedings. Abbott and Fucarile both lost a leg in the blast. The parents of Martin Richard, an 8-year-old who bled to death due to the bomb’s impact, were also present in the courtroom. The jury saw several videos of the bombs going off and injured people screaming.

If the jury convicts Tsarnaev, the trial will move to a second phase to determine his punishment, per CBS News. The only two options available for the jury are life in prison or the death penalty. Tsarnaev’s defense lawyers tried four times to have the trial moved out of Boston.

Things to know about the death penalty in the Commonwealth:

• The last execution in Massachusetts, which was by electric chair, was in 1947.
• State courts struck down the death penalty in 1982, via Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).
• Tsarnaev’s case allows for capital punishment for about 50 crimes, as he has been charged in the federal court system. The detonation of weapons of mass destruction resulting in death is one of those crimes.

WHDH noted that the case is the most closely watched terrorism trial in the U.S. since the Oklahoma City bombing case in the mid-1990s.

More Boston Marathon coverage on Patch:

• Alleged Boston Marathon Bomber’s Widow Could Face Criminal Charges
• Injured Boston Bombing Couple to Divorce
• Boston Marathon Bombing Suspect’s Lawyers Seek Indictment Dismissal
• Tsarnaev Lawyers: Delay Trial Over Paris Attacks
• Death Penalty Complicates Boston Bomber Trial
• Watch: Boston Marathon Victim Walks Again
• Marathon Bombing Victims Help a North Andover Boy