[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA

[Rick Halperin]

May 7



USA:

Tsarnaev: The Cost Of A Death Sentence Versus Life Imprisonment



The penalty phase of the trial of the Boston Marathon Bomber, Dzhokhar 
Tsarnaev, is well under way. The jury heard Tsnarnaev's family from Russia give 
tearful testimony on Monday of how delicate and emotional he was as a child. 
Apparently, young Tsarnaev cried when Mufasa died in the Lion King. Even 
Tsarnaev was seen wiping away tears during the testimony.

While this type of presentation is meant to pull at the heartstrings of the 
jurors, to humanize Tsarnaev, perhaps it is backfiring. People seem to be 
absolutely indignant that Tsarnaev can show emotion for his family or himself, 
but display no remorse for the victims or their families.

This case has sparked heated debates about the death penalty. One justification 
made by those who are in favor of the death penalty is that it is cheaper just 
to execute Tsarnaev rather than use our tax dollars to keep him alive. I 
wondered whether this was true and decided to explore it.

To compare the cost of pursuing a conviction of death versus life imprisonment, 
we have to look at different scenarios, like (1) what would it cost if Tsarnaev 
is sentenced to life in prison (2) what would it cost if Tsarnaev is sentenced 
to death and appeals, and (3) what would it have cost if the death penalty was 
never on the table and he was sentenced to life in prison.

The 1st scenario is if the jury sentences Tsarnaev to life in prison without 
the possibility of parole. To calculate this we have to consider the cost of 
Tsarnaev's defense, the cost incurred by the government in prosecuting the case 
and the cost of caring for Tsarnaev for the rest of his natural life.

There have been 2 federal death penalty cases in Massachusetts since 1998, not 
including Tsarnaev's trial. One of those cases was against Kristin Gilbert, a 
30 year old nurse indicted in 1998 for murdering 4 of her patients and 
attempting to murder 3 others by injecting them with the heart stimulant 
epinephrine. Ultimately, the jury sentenced her to life in prison. The cost of 
her defense was approximately $1.6 million. The prosecution in that case spent 
approximately $350,000 on experts and a jury consultant. The salary of the 
prosecutors and their investigators are not included. Additionally, it cost 
$80,000 for stenographers and transcripts and $125,000 for the jurors. That's 
$2,155,000 for the cost of a federal capital murder trial that ended in life 
imprisonment in Massachusetts in 2001. Let's take that number and assume it is 
higher now because of inflation and factor in things like the cost of flying 
Tsarnaev's family in from Russia. For the sake of argument, let's make that 
number $2.5 million.

If Tsarnaev receives life in prison without the possibility of parole, he will 
likely be housed at the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum 
Facility, or ADX, the "supermax" federal prison in Florence, Colorado. 
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the average cost to house an inmate 
for 1 year in a federal prison is $26,309. Tsarnaev is 21 now. If he lives to 
71, that means approximately $1,315,450 in government money for his care. 
That???s just the average. It is probably more expensive to house prisoners at 
ADX, but let's assume the average cost for the purposes of this exercise.

That's a little over $3.3 million for scenario 1.

The 2nd scenario is a little trickier because of all the variables. Let's limit 
the scenario to the cost associated with sentencing Tsarnaev to death, him 
exhausting all of his appeals and ultimately being put to death. In that 
scenario, we would take the same $2.5 million figure from the cost of trial 
above and add the cost of the appeals, the cost to care for him during the 
appeals and the cost to execute him.

There is no data on the cost of appealing a death conviction in Massachusetts, 
but in 2014, the average cost in Nevada was approximately $140,000. Moreover, 
the appeals process can take decades. Tsarnaev will have to be housed in a 
federal prison during that time. Let's say his appeals take 10 years, 
multiplied by the $26,309 per year to care for him. That totals $263,090. If 
his appeals fail, he will be executed by lethal injection and the costs 
associated with that are minimal and do not need to be factored in.

Scenario 2 is a little over $2.9 million.

So, it appears that those who are in favor of the death penalty are correct 
that at this stage, it is cheaper to execute Tsarnaev than sentence him to life 
in prison.

However, let's look at the 3rd scenario, where the death penalty was never on 
the table. The average cost of a federal death penalty trial is 8 times more 
than a federal murder case. This is because in a federal death penalty case, 
much more is at stake - someone's life - and no corners are cut. There are 
usually multiple defense attorney assigned to ensure competent representation, 
more experts involved and because there are 2 phases, the trials are much 
longer than in a non-death penalty case. So let's take that $2.5 million figure 
and divide it by 8. That leaves us with $312,500 for the cost of trial. Add in 
the $1,315,450 for his care for the rest of his life in ADX.

Scenario 3 is approximately $1.63 million.

These numbers are merely estimates based on what I could find in public 
records, but I think they are a fair representation of the cost considerations 
in pursuing a federal death penalty case.

(source: Commentary; Aivi Nguyen is a trial lawyer with the Law Firm of 
Bowditch & Dewey, LLP in Worcester----golocalprov.com)

****************

Dead Man Walking Nun to Testify at Tsarnaev Trial----As debate turns to what 
Boston bomber could expect at Colorado's Supermax



The nun and death-penalty foe behind Dead Man Walking is due to testify in 
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's sentencing trial today and defense attorneys hope she 
portrays the death penalty as an unjust punishment for the 21-year-old. Sister 
Helen Prejean, who developed a close relationship with Louisiana death row 
inmate Patrick Sonnier before his execution in 1984, is 1 of 2 witnesses left 
to testify for the defense, though federal prosecutors plan to file a motion to 
bar her from taking the stand, NBC News reports. With Prejean in mind, talk has 
already turned to where Tsarnaev would end up should he get life in prison.

NBC News reports Tsarnaev is likely to spend the rest of his life at Colorado's 
Supermax - described in a recent lawsuit - if the jury rules against the death 
penalty. There, under special conditions, he could get 2 15-minute phone calls 
per month and visits from parents and siblings only, according a former warden 
of a death-row prison in Indiana. Testifying for the defense, he argued 
Tsarnaev would be shut out from the rest of the world at the prison, where 
inmates spend about 23 hours a day in isolation, the Christian Science Monitor 
reports. Tsarnaev's lawyers are suggesting such a fate is nearly on par with 
execution.

Attempting to bolster their case for the death penalty, prosecutors noted 
inmates are subject to special administrative measures which can be renewed 
annually, challenged by inmates, and are often lifted via a "step-down 
process," a prosecutor said. The prosecution also took issue with the defense's 
aerial photo of the prison covered in snow, which made it look like it was "an 
extremely forlorn, forbidding institution," per the Boston Globe. Prosecutors 
aruge there's no guarantee Tsarnaev will end up at the Supermax, or that he 
won't be moved from it in the future.

(source: newser.com)

*******************

The Death Penalty Is Barbaric, Let's Torture Instead! Capital Punishment and 
the Supermax Alternative



Many Americans are conflicted about the death penalty. There are cases where 
criminal defendants appear to deserve death, for example, mass murderer and 
terrorist, Timothy McVeigh. The actions of these defendants are so outrageous 
that they call for the most extreme condemnation possible: complete and 
irreversible removal from the human community.

However, Americans are also repeatedly told that the death penalty is barbaric, 
inhumane, and racist. The pope is opposed to it. Likewise, so is almost all of 
Europe. Phil Zuckerman, the noted sociologist, even argues in his recent book, 
Living the Secular Life, that strong opposition to the death penalty among most 
nonreligious Americans is an indication that the nonreligious may be more moral 
than the religious, at least in some respects.

Well, we certainly don't want to be immoral, racist, or barbaric, do we?

But how to reconcile the sense that a defendant deserves the ultimate penalty 
with the increasing repugnance toward the death penalty? Enter supermax!

Supermax as salve for the hypocritical conscience

The attorneys for convicted terrorist Dzhohkar Tsarnaev made an argument the 
other day that has become all too common in capital cases. In their eagerness 
to persuade jurors to spare Tsarnaev's life, they emphasized how miserable 
Tsarnaev will be if he is sentenced to life imprisonment. That's because he'll 
be serving his time in the federal supermax facility in Colorado. Along with 
the other prisoners there, Tsarnaev will be kept in isolation. He will be 
spending 23 hours a day for the rest of his life in a roughly 90 ft. cell, 
where he will eat, sleep, urinate, and defecate. For the 1 hour a day that he 
is let out of his cage for exercise, he will have no contact with other 
inmates.

Yeah, that'll teach him! Don't kill him; make him suffer alone for 50 years.

So we can punish murderous criminal defendants harshly without resorting to 
that barbaric death penalty. Problem solved. Just lock 'em away and forget 'em.

The death penalty taboo

Tsarnaev will suffer if he imprisoned in supermax. Studies have shown that 
prisoners in supermax facilities are more prone to develop mental illness 
because of the psychological deprivation and isolation they experience. This 
extreme isolation is a form of torture, as stressful, if not as immediately 
painful, as physical torture. Only someone who has lost their moral compass or 
someone who has developed a taboo mentality toward the death penalty could 
possibly regard supermax confinement as a humane alternative to the death 
penalty.

And much of the opposition to the death penalty is based on a taboo mentality. 
It is derived primarily from the notion that life is "sacred," ironically an 
attitude seemingly more prevalent among secular Americans than religious 
Americans. Do I exaggerate? Aren't there good arguments against the death 
penalty? There is one good argument, which I will get to below, but to 
demonstrate that opposition to the death penalty is mostly based on emotional 
repugnance, not sound arguments, consider some of the arguments that have been 
offered:

The state shouldn't be killing people. Who should then? Governments took over 
responsibility for criminal punishment as way to end private vengeance. If the 
death penalty is appropriate, it is precisely the state, not relatives of 
victims, that should impose the penalty.

The death penalty is racist. There is little doubt that much of the American 
justice system is affected by either explicit or implicit racial bias. This 
bias manifests at all levels, from disproportionate traffic stops and arrests 
of blacks to disproportionate death sentences for blacks. But ultimately, this 
argument against the death penalty is no more than a makeweight. Removing the 
death penalty is not going to end racism in the American justice system. 
Moreover, if the adverse impact on blacks were the real reason for opposing the 
death penalty, presumably opponents would be satisfied with a quota system, 
whereby no death penalty could be imposed on blacks, Hispanics, and so forth 
until the requisite number of whites were sentenced to death. A quota system 
would remove the effects of racial bias. I doubt, however, that this would 
satisfy death penalty opponents.

Capital cases are more costly. It is true the death penalty cases cost a lot-- 
but they cost a lot precisely because death penalty opponents wage decades-long 
court battles to prevent the imposition or the carrying out of a death 
sentence.

The death penalty is not a deterrent. The most objective, comprehensive study 
on this issue was carried out by the National Academy of Sciences. In its 2012 
report, the NAS stated that no firm conclusion could be drawn about the effect 
of the death penalty on homicide rates, in part because of the limitations of 
such studies.

The death penalty is vengeful; it appeals to our darker emotions. This is 
simply arguing through characterization. One could respond by counter-argument 
that the death penalty expresses the just outrage of the moral community.

The death penalty is cruel. And supermax isn't?

The one good argument against the death penalty

Erroneous convictions. Because of its irreversibility, that's the real problem 
with the death penalty. We always knew that our criminal justice system was 
imperfect, but until the advent of DNA evidence, we did not realize how 
imperfect. We have now had dozens of death-row inmates exonerated. The best 
study on this issue estimates that about 4% of those sentenced to death have 
been wrongly convicted. That translates to several hundred persons wrongly 
sentenced to death.

This concern has no application to Tsarnaev, of course. He has effectively 
conceded his guilt. However, it is doubtful that we can devise a criminal 
justice system that reserves the death penalty only for those that we really, 
really know are guilty.

Being honest about the death penalty and the limits of criminal justice

Because of the unacceptably high possibility of an erroneous conviction, I am a 
reluctant opponent of the death penalty. Reluctant, because some murderers 
undoubtedly deserve to die. But for me at least, it is no consolation to be 
told these murderers will be locked away in isolation for decades. Except for 
the extremely rare Hannibal Lecters of the world, there's no possible rationale 
or justification for supermax facilities. They are vehicles for prolonged 
psychological torture.

If we can't utilize the death penalty because of the danger of wrongful 
convictions, we just have to accept that. But we're only deluding ourselves if 
we think somehow we are morally superior because we reject the death penalty in 
favor of supermax.

(source: Ronald A. Lindsay, President & CEO, Center for Inquiry; Author of The 
Necessity of Secularism----Huffington Post)

**************************

Michigan death row inmate files suit in bid for freedom



Convicted killer Marvin Gabrion is trying a new tactic to quash his 2002 
conviction and death sentence for killing a 19-year-old woman on federal land 
in Newaygo County.

In a civil lawsuit filed last week, Michigan's only death row inmate is asking 
a federal judge to set aside what he calls an illegal sentence for the 1997 
murder of Rachel Timmerman. The young mother from Cedar Springs was found in a 
lake in the Manistee National Forest bound with chains and cinder blocks.

Gabrion, 61, is on death row at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, 
Indiana.

Unlike other court petitions, Gabrion wants to keep this case sealed due to 
psychological and personal records that are "highly relevant but sensitive.''

That doesn't sit well with the U.S. Attorney's Office. It filed a response this 
week opposing Gabrion's petition to keep the case under wraps.

"There is no rule or precedent that permits Gabrion's request,'' Assistant U.S. 
Attorney Timothy P. VerHey wrote in the government's response. "The law is 
decidedly against his request.''

VerHey's 5-page response is the only document available for public inspection 
in the civil case filed April 27.

"The Court will recall that, at the time of his conviction and trial, there was 
much public interest in the case because of, among other things, the rarity of 
death penalty cases in Michigan,'' VerHey wrote.

"By claiming that his case was a miscarriage of justice, Gabrion has provided 
the public with an opportunity to learn more about the process,'' VerHey 
contends. "Further, the public always has an interest in determining whether 
its judicial system is working properly. This is especially true in a 
high-profile case such as this one.''

Gabrion's attorney, Scott G. Graham of Portage, was not immediately available 
for comment.

Gabrion has exhausted all appeals in his criminal case, a voluminous file 
containing 771 entries over the course of 16 years. 8 defense attorneys have 
worked on the case since its inception.

A federal appeals court in Cincinnati 4 years ago upheld his conviction and 
death sentence. In April, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would not hear 
Gabrion's case. Earlier this year, Gabrion filed a request for an emergency 
psychiatric review. That request was rejected.

(source: Detroit Free Press)

*********************

The Socialization of Evil: Robert Jay Lifton on the Death Penalty, the 
Holocaust & Armenian Genocide



For the past 5 decades, eminent psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton has written 
extensively on the psychological dimensions of war, from the U.S. atomic 
bombing of Hiroshima, to doctors who aided Nazi crimes, to nuclear war. In 
1967, Lifton won a National Book Award for his work "Death in Life: Survivors 
of Hiroshima." In 1970, he would testify before a Senate Committee about the 
Vietnam War, warning about the need to help rehumanize returning veterans into 
society. In 1986 he published the seminal book "The Nazi Doctors: Medical 
Killing and the Psychology of Genocide." In the final part of our interview, 
Lifton expounds on what he calls "the socialization of evil," from the 
Holocaust to Vietnam to the death penalty.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. 
I'm Amy Goodman with Nermeen Shaikh. Our guest is Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, 
leading American psychiatrist. Among his books, "Witness to an Extreme Century: 
A Memoir" and "Who Owns Death? Capital Punishment, the American Conscience and 
the End of Executions." Dr. Lifton, U.S. prisons are feeling the effect of 
global revulsion against the death penalty. The U.S. is the only industrialized 
country in the world to have it. So when European companies cut off the drug 
supply to be used in the execution cocktail of a prisoner, states have had to 
put off executions because they don't have the proper death cocktail. Utah just 
passed, as a backup, firing squad, execution by firing squads; and Oklahoma 
just passed gassing. Not clear exactly how that gassing of a prisoner would be 
done, if they aren't able to get their hands on the drugs. Can you talk about 
this? You have written this book, "Who Owns Death?" and you have talked to many 
different people involved in the death chain.

ROBERT JAY LIFTON: At issue is the mythology of humane killing, of course, a 
contradiction in terms; and with each form of killing by the state in carrying 
through a death penalty, whether it is hanging, gas chamber, electric chair or 
the use of chemicals, with each of the shifts from one to the other there is 
the claim that this is more humane. But there is no such thing as humane 
killing. Each of them brings about suffering, cruel and unusual punishment 
which is prohibited according to our laws, and one can't overcome that. It is 
another situation where you judge a society and many wise writers including, 
for instance Albert Camus, have focused on judging a whole society in terms of 
whether it will kill individual people. There is always also the added idea of 
human culpability or the inability of human beings to be certain about 
convictions that lead to the death penalty. So with human fallibility, there is 
always the danger, whatever the technical tools, DNA or anything else, there is 
always the danger, and it has happened, of executing innocent people. If you 
have the danger of executing innocent people, there must be no execution 
carried out by society.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Lifton, you have also talked about, in the context of the 
research that you have done on genocide and war, that you were surprised to 
find that the socialization of evil is all too easy to accomplish. So could you 
talk about that in the context of both the death penalty in the U.S. as well as 
the expending numbers of prisoners here, the incarceration system?

ROBERT JAY LIFTON: It's as if even rightwing Republicans, when they experience 
the prison system, sometimes get the urge to reform it. Most of these reform 
movements haven't gone very far. I hear there's a new one that combines 
rightwing people and the usual people from the left who see the unfairness and 
cruelty within the prison system. Yes, the prison system has become a norm and 
it involves selectively enormous numbers of blacks, African-Americans, who are 
imprisoned and there are various reasons for that including methods of policing 
and lack of opportunity in various environments and that forms a norm that 
becomes part of the way society runs. Then police departments, politicians, 
people in everyday life simply adjust to it. You know, adaptation is the great 
human achievement in evolution. We are the champions of adaptation, so much so 
that we have made the planet our habitat. That is not true of any other 
species. But adaptation is also a vulnerability because sometimes immediate 
adaptation is contrary to larger necessities and ethical issues in more 
extensive adaption and that is what we are talking about, a narrow, normalized 
adaptation to a cruel and unfair prison system.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Jay Lifton, you wrote the book "Witness to an Extreme 
Century: A Memoir." Explain what you mean by extreme century.

ROBERT JAY LIFTON: You know, there is a group now that wants to say we are 
making progress because if you look statistically, there seem to be fewer wars 
and relatively fewer people according to population size. That has not been my 
experience. In studying both Auschwitz and Hiroshima I found these to be 
defining events of the 20th Century and, although they are very different 
events, they converge in threatening the human future. One has to do with, of 
course, the gas chambers in Auschwitz that was a high technology of the time 
and it's our capacity to destroy ourselves, in this case, with chemicals or 
other substances. The other, of course, has to do with nuclear threat and that 
is a more immediate danger. Nuclear weapons still, although not thought about 
much publicly now, certainly when one looks into it, still a looming threat, if 
anything greater than in recent past. So these are 2 events that define the 
20th century. And when one looks for ways, and you know I would be the first to 
want to look for human progress, but when one looks for ways of diminishing 
killing in war those who make the claim are hard put to explain the 20th 
century; more people killed in that century than any other century. So 
Auschwitz and Hiroshima are defining events of the 20th century.

Still, we can look toward expressions, antinuclear expressions, confrontations 
of the holocaust and of weapons of mass destruction of any kind that we mount 
as sources of hope and as commitments that we continue to make, that has to do 
- that's what I mean by being a witness. When I did my research on, say, 
Auschwitz and Hiroshima I was looking to be accurate in what I found 
psychologically. I also saw that research as a form of witness. A witness is 
someone who opens himself or herself to experience, takes it in and retells the 
story, tells the tale, gives it a new narrative. That is what I saw myself as 
doing with Hiroshima and with Auschwitz and with other events of the 20th 
century. Also to the Vietnam war and the Vietnam antiwar veterans who admirably 
found meaning in the meaninglessness of their war. So witness and research 
become combined. The other thing I would say about it is

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean they found meaning in the meaninglessness of the 
war?

ROBERT JAY LIFTON: Every soldier who fights a war and, for that matter, those 
in the society that is mounting a war need to have a sense that there is 
justification for this war and every politician must explain to his or her 
people these soldiers of ours did not die in vain. That becomes harder and 
harder to say in counterinsurgencies like Vietnam with an atrocity producing 
situation that is psychologically and militarily created. The antiwar veterans 
developed the insight that this war was wrong and bad. They confronted this 
insight which is painful to do - very painful thing to do for a veteran because 
one has killed people and one has seen one's buddies dying right next to one. 
That was a brave and hard thing to do. Most veterans' groups come home often to 
victory parades or celebration or whatever and declare the just achievements of 
the war, the heroic victory for which they're celebrated. Of course, the 
Vietnam veterans were not welcomed, they came home individually; but these 
antiwar veterans came home with no feeling that there was anything like victory 
or a just cause in relation to their war. They got up in 1971, the Winter 
Soldier Hearings and other such events, described how they had witnessed and 
been involved in atrocities and that was the truth about their war. They found 
meaning in this political and personal opposition to their war. Their war which 
could not be justified so that was what I meant by the meaning they found in 
the meaninglessness of their war.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Lifton, before we conclude I would like to ask you about 
the Armenian genocide about which you spoke last night at the PEN Festival. You 
talked about the significance of cultural genocide and the targeting in 
genocides of this kind of intellectuals, writers, artists and why that is 
particularly important. Could you talk about that?

ROBERT JAY LIFTON: Yes, when Raphael Lemkin, a heroic man, came to the concept 
of genocide he included what he called cultural genocide; the destruction of 
the institutions and ritual elements of a culture which all of us live from. 
And I talked last night about how intellectuals, professionals of all kinds, 
are key groups in sustaining these rituals and structures and institutions that 
we call culture because we human beings are meaning-hungry creatures and we 
don't take in perceptions nakedly. If you sit across the table from me I don't 
just see you as you are but I reconstruct you as people I know, I think about, 
who are doing certain things. We all use this wonderful and dangerous gray 
matter of our brain in this symbolizing and meaning constructing process. The 
intellectuals and professionals are key because they create words and images in 
not only sustaining but in criticizing culture; and when you seek out 
intellectuals and professionals to put them to death, as perpetrators of 
genocide often do, you are making a wound in the whole spiritual side of 
culture which is crucial to human life and that is another source of great 
human suffering and that was what much of the panel was about last night.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: The other point that you make is that genocides, in fact, rely 
on the participation at one level or another of the professional classes, 
intellectuals, etc. Could you explain why?

ROBERT JAY LIFTON: Yes. When I did my study of Nazi doctors I was, of course, 
very intent on looking at how professional collude in genocide by this 
egregious example of Nazi doctors. But looking more generally at genocide, I 
came to see that professionals are crucial to carrying out any form of 
genocide. They are well educated and capable of doing the nitty-gritty work of 
genocide so they often develop the rational for the genocide, the technology, 
some of the science. They often create images or poems or songs which render 
the genocide heroic and in that way professionals are socialized to evil.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Jay Lifton, we want to thank you for being with us. We are 
going to continue this discussion afterwards and post it on line. Robert Jay 
Lifton, leading American psychiatrist, author of many books. He is a 
distinguished professor emeritus of psychiatry and psychology at City 
University of New York, author of "Witness to an Extreme Century," "Who Owns 
Death" and much more. I'm Amy Goodman with Nermeen Shaikh. This is Democracy 
Now!

(source: Democracy Now!)

*****************

Tsarnaev's defiance turns to resignation

Day after day, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev strides into the courtroom eager, it seems, to 
be anywhere but the tiny jail cell where he has spent most of the last 2 years. 
He chats with his lawyers who treat him kindly as they try to convince a jury 
that "life in prison" is the better choice.

I first saw Tsarnaev at his arraignment July 2013. He was taller than I'd 
expected and still healing from gunshot wounds incurred during the Watertown 
shootout and his subsequent capture. Back then, he seemed defiant, speaking in 
a Russian accent, which his wrestling buddies told me he had never done before.

But since his trial began in January, his defiance has given way to 
resignation. For the most part, Tsarnaev has seemed disengaged, showing little 
emotion, fidgeting in his seat as if he is bored or perhaps impatient.

He knows there are two possible outcomes. He will be sentenced either to death 
or to life in solitary confinement in a Supermax prison. Tsarnaev is ready to 
accept his punishment, or at least that's what his lawyers say.

Last month, 21-year-old Tsarnaev was found guilty of using a weapon of mass 
destruction, guilty of conspiracy, and guilty of actions that caused the death 
of four people and irreparably changed the lives of 260 others injured by the 
bombs he and his brother detonated at the Boston Marathon in 2013.

In court, people have wept as they've listened to survivors testify about how 
it was such a great day until "that moment" when the blast lifted spectators 
into the air and dropped them bleeding onto the sidewalk.

It is the story of the brothers' last hours together that had jurors on the 
edge of their seats as they watched surveillance videos showing Dzhokar, then 
19, and Tamerlan, 26, trying to make their escape after their photos were made 
public.

Their flight began with another murder. Surveillance video shows 2 shadowy 
figures crossing MIT campus, surprising an officer as he sat in his police 
cruiser. The brake lights flash brightly as Officer Sean Collier apparently 
struggles with the men who are trying to steal his gun. The struggle lasts 50 
seconds and then another flash -- the fatal shot fired at point blank range.

The jury heard how the brothers carjacked an SUV driven by Chinese national Dun 
Meng, and they heard how Tamerlan told Meng he was behind the attack.

"He asked, 'You know who did it? I did it and I just killed a policeman in 
Cambridge,'" Meng testified.

Powerful images from the Boston bombing trial

Meng described how they pulled over at a gas station, how he counted the steps 
in his mind, slipping off his seatbelt and opening the car door in a single 
gesture, then bolting across the street to another gas station. Security 
cameras capture the fear on Meng's face as he begs the store clerk to call 911 
and then crawls into a storage room to hide.

Other surveillance video shows the younger Tsarnaev inside the gas station 
store carefully picking out chips, drinks, snacks -- possibly for a drive to 
New York where prosecutors say the Tsarnaev brothers intended to explode the 
remaining pressure cooker and homemade pipe bombs. After Meng's escape, 
Tamerlan looks unhappy as he races to the door to get his brother who puts down 
the armful of snacks and races out the door. In the hours that follow, one 
brother died. The other became the subject of a massive manhunt that ends in 
his capture.

How did Tsarnaevs prepare for Boston bombing?

Prosecutors had little difficulty convincing the jury of Tsarnaev's guilt. Yet, 
in the penalty phase, it is Tsarnaev's lawyers who have tried to focus the jury 
less on what he did and more on who he was. They have done this by showing the 
jury two starkly different images of the brothers. Tamerlan was portrayed as 
manipulative, controlling, a dangerously aggressive, frustrated boxer who was 
unemployed and who traveled to Dagestan to wage jihad. Dzhokhar, on the other 
hand, was portrayed as a gifted student and athlete, eager to learn and please 
his teachers. A young man who ultimately could not separate himself from the 
destructive path of his family.

Several of his teachers from grade school have testified on his behalf, smiling 
as they fondly remembered the child they believed had so much promise for the 
future. High school and college friends who once adored Tsarnaev and his goofy 
humor and kindness now feel betrayed.

Only toward the end did Tsarnaev seem to show any emotion. Smiling back at his 
teachers and dabbing a tear after aunts and cousins testified about the child 
they knew whose kindness brought out the best in people. People who once saw so 
much potential, who now see a life wasted.

(source: CNN)

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Professor: Colo. shooter was smart, 'socially immature'



A professor who helped run James Holmes' doctoral program testified Wednesday 
that the man accused in the Aurora theater shooting was not a good fit in his 
lab, and another professor described him as very smart but a "socially 
immature" person who made awkward jokes.

Holmes faces the death penalty in connection with the July 20, 2012, shooting 
that left 12 dead. Prosecutors are laying out their case that he secretly 
plotted for months as his professional and personal life unraveled. Holmes was 
withdrawing from the University of Colorado neuroscience program at the time on 
the shooting.

Defense attorneys say Holmes suffers from schizophrenia, was delusional, and 
his mental illness prompted him to plan and execute the shooting without 
understanding that what he was doing was wrong.

Prosecutors persuaded Judge Carlos Samour to let them introduce one of Holmes' 
school presentations as evidence, over defense objections. Holmes' instructors 
say even though he was essentially failing, they offered him a chance to 
re-take tests and remain in the program. He quit instead.

Defense: Theater shooter killed to improve self-worth

"I think very much intellect is a very huge issue in this case, if not for the 
defense, it is for the prosecution," Samour said. "Both sides have talked about 
the defendant's performance in school."

Proceedings paused several times Wednesday afternoon after 2 jurors alerted 
Samour that they recognized witnesses. In both cases, jurors said they could 
maintain their impartiality toward Holmes.

Testimony on Wednesday also came from bomb-squad investigators who checked out 
Holmes' car, which was parked outside the theater.

The trial, which is in its 2nd week, is expected to last 4 or 5 months.

(source: USA Today)