A US jury, having found 21-year-old Muslim immigrant Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty on all 30 counts in the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing, will reconvene next week to decide whether the young man of Chechen descent should die or be held in prison for life without parole.
The jury of seven women and five men pronounced the verdict on Wednesday after deliberating on the 30 charges against Tsarnaev for the terrorist attack that killed three people and injured 264 others on April 15, 2013.
Tsarnaev showed no emotion as the jurors pronounced one guilty verdict after another. Seventeen of the 30 charges carry the death penalty. As many as 17 of the survivors had lost their limbs in the attack, and some of them were at the courthouse on prosthetic legs.
The homemade pressure-cooker bombs, targeting the famous Boston Marathon that is held annually since 1897, had been planted by Tsarnaev and his elder brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, near the finish line of the race. Tamerlan died when he was shot by police and run over by his brother during a getaway attempt.
At the trial, defence attorneys for Tsarnaev kept asserting that it was the older brother who masterminded the attack that was said to be an act of retribution for US military campaigns in Islamic nations.
Although the verdict against Tsarnaev is overwhelming, a debate is on as to whether he should be awarded the death penalty. This is primarily because Massachusetts, a famously liberal State, is known to be strongly against capital punishment. The State, which has not executed anyone since 1947, formally abolished the death sentence in 1984. Some polls have suggested that a majority of Bostonians do not want to see Tsarnaev sentenced to death.