Convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death for six of the 17 counts that carried the death penalty, including the use of a weapon of mass destruction and bombing of a public place.
The 2013 attack, carried out by Tsarnaev along with his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was the worst terrorist attach on US soil since 9/11, killing three and injuring hundreds.
Tsarnaev, portrayed by prosecutors as a typical-teenager-turned-relentless-jihadist, reportedly remained practically emotionless, just as he did throughout most of the proceedings during his trial, when the sentence was delivered. According to Susan Zalkind, a journalist present at the scene, he looked down, put his hands in his pockets, and then looked up “with that same goddamn blank stare.”
The AP reported that on hearing the news, Tsarnaev’s father, who lives in the Russian republic of Dagestan, “moaned deeply on hearing the news and hung up.”
US attorney general Loretta Lynch said the penalty was adequate: “The ultimate penalty is a fitting punishment for this horrific crime and we hope that the completion of this prosecution will bring some measure of closure to the victims and their families.”
Tsarnaev was found guilty in April on 30 counts, not all of which carried the death penalty. Appeals of the sentence of capital punishment could keep Tsarnaev on death row for years or even decades.