NEW YORK: The highly anticipated trial of Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev opens Monday, promising to inflame emotions 18 months after the bloody attack, the worst on US soil since September 11, 2001.
Tsarnaev, 21, faces the death penalty for the April 15, 2013 bombing at the finish line of the Boston marathon that killed three people and wounded 264.
Jury selection will commence Monday for the trial, which is expected to last several months, after a three-month delay.
Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty to 30 charges, including conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death and bombing a public place resulting in death.
The federal trial is one of the most anticipated since Timothy McVeigh's for detonating a bomb in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people in 1995.
Tsarnaev will be represented by a team of five lawyers, including Judy Clarke, a defence attorney known for getting clients off death row.
She has represented Eric Randolph, the mastermind behind the Atlanta Olympic bombing that killed two people and injured more than 100. She secured consecutive life sentences for him instead of death sought by prosecutors.
She also helped spare Unabomber Ted Kaczynski from death, after he sent several explosives to universities and airlines, killing three and injuring 23 between 1978 and 1995.
But in order to ease the death sentence for Tsarnaev, she would have to strike a deal with prosecutors, which so far seems an unlikely prospect.
Comments
Comments are closed.