Boston Marathon bomber gets his chance to speak at formal sentencing

BOSTON —  His lead attorney has said he’s “sorry” for what he did, and a famed Catholic nun told a jury he expressed remorse to her for his victims.

But in the two years since he was apprehended, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has never spoken publicly about his role in the deadly 2013 attacks that killed three people and injured nearly 300. The jury that convicted him and ultimately sentenced him to death in May did so without even once hearing the sound of his voice after Tsarnaev declined to testify on his own behalf at his two-month federal terrorism trial.

There’s a chance Tsarnaev could finally break his silence Wednesday. The 21-year-old bomber is scheduled to appear at a hearing in Boston where he will be formally sentenced to death by lethal injection. Before Judge George O’Toole hands down the sentence, roughly 20 bombing survivors and family members of those killed or injured in the attacks are expected to deliver victim impact statements, directly addressing Tsarnaev about the suffering and loss he caused.

After that, the judge will give Tsarnaev the opportunity to address the courtroom—though it’s unclear if he actually will. His attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.

Tsarnaev has said little since he was arrested four days after he and his older brother, Tamerlan, detonated two pressure-cooker bombs almost simultaneously near the finish line of April 15, 2013, Boston Marathon.

After they were identified as suspects three days later, the brothers shot and killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer while on the run. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, later died from injuries he sustained when his younger brother ran him over with a car during a confrontation with police in Watertown, Mass., a Boston suburb. Several hours after that, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found hiding and severely wounded by gunfire in a boat parked in a nearby backyard.

Scrawled in the hull of the boat was what prosecutors later described as Tsarnaev’s terrorist manifesto, a lengthy note that explained the brothers had carried out their attack as retaliation against the U.S. for violence against Muslims overseas. “The U.S. government is killing our innocent civilians, but most of you already know that,” Tsarnaev wrote. “I can’t stand to see such evil go unpunished... I don’t like killing, but due to said (illegible), it’s allowed.”

That note would be Tsarnaev’s most extensive statement to date. In court hearings over the last two years, he’s said less than 10 words — including his verbal plea of “not guilty” that he entered at his arraignment in July 2013. In December 2014, on the eve of his trial, Tsarnaev was asked by the judge if he’d been kept apprised of legal maneuverings (“Yes,” he said), if he’d been in regular contact with his attorneys (“Yes, sir”) and whether he was happy with his legal representation (“Very much”). That was the last time he spoke publicly.

During jury selection and his subsequent trial over the last five months, Tsarnaev sat quietly at a table near the front of courtroom nine inside the federal courthouse here, occasionally whispering and smiling with his attorneys when the judge and jurors weren’t around. Just days before he was sentenced to death, Tsarnaev laughed loudly at something one of his attorneys said during a court break—taking many reporters in the courtroom by surprise.

But while court was in session, Tsarnaev seemed determined to be inscrutable. He stared at the table or straight ahead as victims one by one took the stand and spoke of their horrific injuries or the loved ones they had lost to the attack. He showed little reaction when former teachers and friends testified about the thoughtful and caring Tsarnaev they had known and their shock at what he had done. The only crack in his façade came in May when his 64-year-old aunt from Russia began sobbing on the stand as she tried to testify on his behalf. Though she tried to regain her composure, she was ultimately too distraught to testify, and as she left the stand, Tsarnaev repeatedly wiped his eyes with a tissue, clearly emotional.

Tsarnaev’s defense team never tried to argue he didn’t participate in the bombings.

“It was him,” Judy Clarke, his lead attorney, said on day one of the trial. But they sought to get him a life sentence by arguing that he was a troubled kid from a dysfunctional family led astray by his radicalized and domineering older brother. Still, the defense offered little explanation for how a seemingly normal college student suddenly embraced terrorism, whether he still holds any of his radicalized views or if he and his brother had help in their plot.

In the end, the jury heard Tsarnaev’s views only indirectly. Sister Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun and staunch death penalty opponent made famous by the film “Dead Man Walking,” testified Tsarnaev had expressed remorse for the victims of the attacks during one of several meetings she had with him. “He said it emphatically. He said, ‘No one deserves to suffer like they did,’” Prejean testified.

Clarke later told the jury Tsarnaev’s conversation with Prejean was proof that he was “genuinely sorry” for what he had done. But it wasn’t enough for the jury, who recommended the death penalty. While at least three of the 12 jurors cried as they handed down the sentence and his attorneys looked stricken, Tsarnaev offered no visible reaction.

Tsarnaev, who turns 22 next month, can’t change his sentence by speaking out on Wednesday. Under federal rules, Judge O’Toole is required to impose the death sentence recommended by the jury. But while attorneys usually recommend their clients remain silent so as not to jeopardize future appeals, plenty of defendants have gone against the advice of their legal teams to issue political statements or diatribes.

That includes Timothy McVeigh, who was sentenced to death and ultimately executed for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Asked if he had anything to say at his 1997 sentencing, McVeigh quoted from a 1928 Supreme Court decision on government privacy. “’Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example,’” McVeigh said. “That's all I have.”

When Zacarias Moussaoui was sentenced to life in prison in 2006 for conspiracy as part of the 9/11 attacks, he used his moment to lash out. “God curse America. And God save Osama bin Laden,” Moussaoui declared. (Like Tsarnaev, Moussaoui was also a client of Clarke’s.)

On Wednesday, Tsarnaev could possibly shed light on his current beliefs or apologize in the hope that by publicly showing remorse it might somehow impact his appeal, expected to be filed later this summer. Or he could remain silent—prolonging the enduring mystery of a case that remains shrouded in much secrecy.

More than a month after the death penalty verdict, more than half of the filings in the case remain under seal. That includes a list of the identities of the 12 jurors, who so far have not spoken publicly about the case.