After two full days of deliberation, a Massachusetts jury sentenced Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev to death.
They avoided eye contact with Tsarnaev as each verdict was read Friday afternoon. The seven men and five women who convicted the 21-year-old Russian on 30 charges related to the bombing last month - including 17 counts that carried the death penalty - grew teary-eyed as U.S District Court Judge George O'Toole thanked them for their service. The verdict did not indicate which counts the jury agreed on.
Tsarnaev remained emotionless throughout, despite being sentenced to execution.
The death sentence is a first for a federal jury tasked with a terrorism trial in the post 9/11 era; the last being Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh in 1997. It also marks the first time a Massachusetts jury has voted for capital punishment since 2003.
O'Toole told the jury "the importance of your deliberation is obvious" before sending them out shortly after 4 p.m. on Wednesday. Prosecutors had told them Tsarnaev was a remorseless terrorist while the defense argued he was brainwashed by older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in an ensuing shootout with police.
Tsarnaev's defense team never argued he carried out the bombing, but that he only turned violent because of a lack of family support.
To administer death, all 12 jurors had to unanimously agree on at least one of the related charges or Tsarnaev would be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He would have joined other terrorists on so-called Bomber's Row at a supermax prison in Colorado.