21-year Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, has been formally sentenced to death by a US federal judge, George O'Toole at a court hearing today, Wednesday, June 24.
Tsarnaev expressed little emotion throughout his 12-week trial despite harrowing testimony and grisly video footage, neither has he expressed any public remorse. A prominent Catholic nun, Sister Helen Prejean, who visited him in jail said that he did to show some remorse to her. "No one deserves to suffer like they did," she quoted him as saying.
The April 15, 2013 double bombings at the Boston Marathon were one of the worst assaults on American soil since the September 11, 2001 attacks. Carried out by Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan, the bombs killed 3 people and wounded 264 others, including 17 who lost limbs, near the finish line at the northeastern city's popular marathon.
It took the jury more than 14 hours to choose death rather than life imprisonment for Tsarnaev on six counts. It was a stinging defeat to the defense, who argued for a "lost kid" who would never have committed such horrors without being manipulated by his older brother.
The brothers went on the run and killed a police officer, before Tamerlan was shot dead and Tsarnaev arrested, four days later.
During the trial, government prosecutors argued Tsarnaev was a remorseless terrorist who deserved to die and declared that life imprisonment would be the "minimum" punishment.