Gruesome details of injuries sustained by victims of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings were recounted to jurors in Boston on March 4 as lawyers for the ethnic Chechen on trial for the attack admitted he carried out the assault.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a 21-year-old Kyrgyzstan-born Muslim student and naturalized U.S. citizen, could face the death penalty if convicted of the bombings that killed three people and wounded 264. He also is charged with killing a police officer.
In a dramatic opening statement by Tsarnaev's defense team, attorney Judy Clarke on March 4 admitted Tsarnaev planted the bombs.
She told the jury bluntly: "It was him."
But Clarke said Tsarnaev was radicalized and manipulated by his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a gun battle with police four days after the bomb attack.
If that argument prevails, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s sentence could be reduced from the death penalty to life in prison.