A jury has sentenced 21-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death for his part in the bomb attack that killed three people and injured 264 at the 2013 Boston Marathon.
Per reports in Fairfax, prosecutors described Tsarnaev as an adherent of militant Islamist group al-Qaeda, who carried out the attacks as an act of retribution for US military activities on foreign soil.
The defence acknowledged that Tsarnaev committed the crimes, but claimed that his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died after Dzhokhar ran over him following a police shoot-out, was the true architect of the scheme.
The trial included 10 weeks of testimony, much of it from victims of the bombings, including William Richard, whose eight-year old son Martin died after the attacks, and whose daughter Jane lost a leg but survived.
The federal jury, who last month found Tsarnaev guilty, were given two sentencing options – life in prison without the possibility of release, or death by lethal injection. Following 15 hours of deliberation, they chose the latter.
Massachusetts abolished the death penalty in 1984, but Tsarnaev was tried under US federal law, which still allows for death by lethal injection as a punishment.
The date of Tsarnaev’s execution is yet to be determined, and he is likely to appeal.
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