Tsarnaev guilty on all counts in Boston bombings

Nearly two years after he and his brother bombed the finish line of the Boston Marathon, a jury found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty of capital murder. His trial now moves into the sentencing phase, when the same jury that convicted him must decide whether he deserves the death penalty.

The jury reached its verdict after deliberating for about 11 hours and asking the judge for clarification of some of the language in the 30-count indictment against Tsarnaev. The indictment covered the April 15, 2013 bombings, which killed three people and injured more than 250, plus the death of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer during a carjacking as Tsarnaev fled police.

A guilty verdict seemed almost certain after Tsarnaev’s lawyers admitted he assisted his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, in planning and carrying out the attack.

The defense argued that though Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was 19 at the time, planted one of the two pressure cooker bombs, he was just going along with his older brother, who masterminded the attack. The elder Tsarnaev died in a confrontation with police in the days after the bombings. Police later found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hiding in a boat in a Watertown, Mass., backyard.

By characterizing Tsarnaev as an impressionable teenager, the defense laid the probable foundation for its argument against a death sentence. Attorneys are expected to argue Tsarnaev had poor judgment but is not the evil villain his brother was. But the prosecution already is rejecting that reasoning.

“This was a cold, calculated terrorist act,” federal prosecutor Aloke Chakravarty told the jury during the trial. “This was intentional. It was bloodthirsty. It was to make a point. It was to tell America that ‘We will not be terrorized by you anymore. We will terrorize you.’”

Tsarnaev told investigators the bombings were in retaliation against the United States for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the brothers saw as acts of aggression against Islam. They learned to build the bombs by reading an online publication of al-Qaeda in Yemen.

The trial featured days of testimony by witnesses to the gruesome attacks. They described torn-off limbs, blood-spattered pavement, and ghastly screams in the chaos after the bombings. Bill Richard, the father of 8-year-old Martin Richard, who died in the attack, described making the agonizing decision to leave his mortally wounded son so he could get help for his 6-year-old daughter, whose leg had been blown off. Richard sat in the courtroom today with his arm around his wife, Denise, as the verdict was read.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.