Boston bomber formally sentenced to death by execution

BOSTON (AP/WPRI) — A judge formally sentenced Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to die Wednesday, but not before he apologized for bombing the 2013 Boston Marathon.

After Tsarnaev said his piece, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. quoted Shakespeare’s line about “The evil that men do lives after them” and told Tsarnaev that no one will remember that his teachers were fond of him, that his friends found him fun to be with or that he showed compassion to disabled people. “What will be remembered is that you murdered and maimed innocent people, and that you did it willfully and intentionally. You did it on purpose,” O’Toole said. “I sentence you to the penalty of death by execution,” he said.

Tsarnaev looked down and rubbed his hands together as the judge pronounced his fate.

Tsarnaev was convicted of 30 federal charges for planning and carrying out the terror attack with his older brother, Tamerlan. Days after the bombings, in the midst of a massive manhunt, the brothers killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer and engaged in a wild gun battle with police in the Boston suburb of Watertown. Tamerlan died after being shot by police and run over by Dzhokhar as the younger brother escaped in a stolen car.

Tsarnaev’s lawyers admitted he participated in the bombings, but argued that Tamerlan was the driving force behind the attack.

In a note he scrawled in a boat he was found hiding in, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev said the attack was meant to retaliate against the U.S. for its actions in Muslim countries.