Tsarnaev found guilty of Boston marathon bombing, faces death penalty

A jury in Massachusetts on Wednesday delivered a guilty verdict on all 30 charges against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 21-year-old accused of killing three people in the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.

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Tsarnaev now faces the death penalty, which will trigger a second trial.

He faced a total of 30 charges related to the bombing and the aftermath.

Fifteen of the charges focused on the blast that killed three and injured more than 200 people and six stemmed from the manhunt for Dzhokhar and older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaeve and a firefight three days later that killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev also faced eight more charges from the next day, when police eventually captured him hiding in a boat in a residential backyard in the Boston suburb of Watertown.

The guilty verdicts set up what has long been expected to be the more difficult challenge for the jury: whether to send Tsarnaev to death.

He pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have argued during the trial that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was the ringleader of the plot and misled Dzhokhar.

Tamerlan died in the shootout, when he was shot by police and later driven over by Dzhokhar as he fled.

Before his arrest, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wrote a message on the boat in that included the phrases “The U.S. Government is killing our innocent civilians” and “Stop killing our innocent people and we will stop.”

A number of victims and their families attended the court hearing, including the parents of Martin Richard, the eight-year-old boy who died in the bombing.

Lingzi Lu, 23, and Krystle Campbell, 29, were the two others who were killed in the attack. Sean Collier, 26, was the officer who died after the Tsarnaev brothers shot him in his squad car in Cambridge, Mass.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said in a statement that he’s “thankful” that the trial has ended and is “hopeful for a swift sentencing process.”

“I hope today’s verdict provides a small amount of closure for the survivors, families, and all impacted by the violent and tragic events surrounding the 2013 Boston Marathon,” he added.

During the trial, the government released a number of videos, which showed Tsarnaev placing a bomb near the finish line. Other videos show the blast and the immediate aftermath, as people scream and scramble in the chaos. More than a dozen people lost limbs in the attack.

While Massachusetts does not have the death penalty, the Justice Department tried Tsarnaev on federal charges, which are eligible for the death sentence. Judges have sentenced people to death on federal charges as recently as last year, but the government has not executed a prisoner on federal death row since 2003, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons.

This story was last updated at 3:49 p.m.