Jury Starts Day Two of Deliberations in Boston Trial
U.S. jurors began a second day of deliberations in the Boston bombings trial Wednesday after asking questions about the need for a unanimous verdict and the nature of conspiracy.
Three people were killed and 264 others wounded in the twin blasts at the city's marathon in 2013, the worst attack in the United States since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
Government prosecutors portrayed Muslim immigrant Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who became a U.S. citizen in 2012, as a callous terrorist who carried out the April 15, 2013 bombings to punish the United States.
Tsarnaev's lawyers admit that he planted one of the bombs hidden in a backpack, but cast him as a feckless accomplice, bullied or manipulated into taking part by his more radical elder brother.
Tsarnaev, 21, sat in court wearing a dark blazer, a blue V-neck sweater and a white T-shirt, fidgeting and occasionally flicking his eyes toward the jury as Judge George O'Toole answered questions from jurors.
The seven women and five men must agree to a verdict on 30 separate counts -- many of which have multiple sub-clauses -- over the attacks, the murder of a police officer, a carjacking and a shootout while on the run.
Seventeen of the charges carry the possibility of the death penalty.
They asked whether conspiracy can pertain to a sequence of events over multiple days or a distinct event, to which O'Toole told them the scope and duration of a conspiracy was a question of fact.
The jury also asked whether they must decide unanimously on sub-clauses to three counts that allege conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, bomb a place of public use and maliciously destroy property.
O'Toole told them that a unanimous decision was required to each sub-clause, which relate to the four people who were killed, in counts one, six and 11. In all, the verdict form is 32-pages long.
Jurors also asked if there was a difference between aiding and abetting, to which the judge said it was a single concept.
The jury has already spent longer deliberating than the defense took to present just four witnesses during the trial.
If Tsarnaev is convicted, the trial will enter a second stage, when the jury determines whether he should be executed or spend the rest of his life behind bars without parole -- the only sentencing options available.
Source: Agence France Presse
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