Boston Marathon Bombing Trial Opens With Opposing Portraits of Tsarnaev - New York Times

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A protester outside the federal courthouse in Boston on Wednesday. Credit Erik Jacobs for The New York Times

BOSTON — In a dramatic opening statement, Judy Clarke, the lead defense lawyer for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, quickly, almost suddenly, acknowledged what to many has seemed obvious — that her client had in fact set off the bombs that ripped through the 2013 Boston Marathon and killed three people.

“For the next several weeks, we’re all going to come face to face with unbearable grief, loss and pain caused by a series of senseless, horribly misguided acts carried out by two brothers,” she said, naming Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who is dead, and his younger brother Dzhokhar, then 19.

“There is little that occurred,” Ms. Clarke said, referring to the government’s description of the bombings and the subsequent murder of an M.I.T. police officer, a carjacking and a shootout in nearby Watertown, Mass., “that we dispute.”

“It was him,” she said bluntly of her client, who sat slouched in a chair at the defense table. She added later that Mr. Tsarnaev had to take responsibility for actions that were “inexcusable.”

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Live Coverage: Boston Marathon Bombing Trial Begins

New York Times reporters in Boston are covering opening arguments in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, charged in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings that killed three and injured 260.

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But this admission was only a prologue to her real point — that Dzhokhar was not the radical jihadist that his older brother was — and her ultimate goal, which is to persuade the jury to spare him the death penalty and sentence him to life in prison without parole.

The persuasive powers of Dzhokhar’s older brother dominated the first day of a heart-wrenching trial that is expected to last through June, but is dragging Boston and the country back to the scene of the worst terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001.

In opening statements, prosecutors and defense attorneys laid out the case’s core dispute: Whether, as the prosecution argued, the evidence shows that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was an intellectually and emotionally committed “terrorist” bent on avenging American military campaigns in the Muslim world, partly to help him reach “paradise” after his death. Or whether, as Ms. Clarke argued, her client was a fairly normal teenager, interested in girls and cars and spending time on Facebook, who was under the heavy sway of the older brother he loved and respected and that Tamerlan was the real perpetrator and planner of the crimes.

For Ms. Clarke, her blunt, even surprising admission about her client’s actions seemed aimed at taking off the table any real dispute about who was behind the bombings, which she plainly felt would be easily proved. It was also a way for her to build a rapport with the jury: By ceding so much so early, she was telegraphing to the jurors that she would not waste their time on matters not in dispute and that she was thus leveling with them.

Her strategy seemed to be that if she was frank with jurors at the outset,

they might trust her as she builds her narrative of how her client came to commit terrible, tragic acts — that he was induced and cajoled by his brother and does not deserve to be sentenced to death.

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A synopsis of the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is accused of killing three people and injuring more than 260 in the bombing at the Boston Marathon in 2013. Mr. Tsarnaev is facing 30 federal charges, 17 of which carry the death penalty. He has pleaded not guilty.

For the defense, the relationship between the two brothers will be both a vital and tricky part of the case. One of the first rulings by Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. of Federal District Court Wednesday was to limit the degree to which they could bring up the defendant’s older brother in this phase of the trial, which decides guilt or innocence.

While noting that “some evidence of the brothers’ interactions will be inevitable,” Judge O’Toole said the issue of whether Mr. Tsarnaev was “more or less culpable” than other participants is generally not relevant in the first phase of the trial before sentencing.

The government, which gave its opening statements first, focused on the impact of the attack. The assistant United States attorney, William Weinreb, described in graphic detail how the bombs had ripped the flesh off spectators at the marathon and sent body parts flying in the air. He described the precise way in which the shrapnel had torn into the three victims who died — Martin Richard, 8; Lingzi Lu, 23, and Krystall Campbell, 29 — as relatives of all three listened intently in the courtroom. And, he said, Dzhokhar was a full and equal partner with Tamerlan in their murderous spree.

“They were partners in crime, they planned them together and carried them out together,” Mr. Weinreb said. Dzhokhar, he said, “believed he was a soldier in a holy war against America and he had won an important victory in that war” by killing people at the marathon. The killings, he said, led Dzhokhar to believe that he “had taken a step toward reaching paradise.”

The government also sought to undercut any possible sympathy for Mr. Tsarnaev by casting him as cold-hearted, selfish and hedonistic. Shortly after the bombings, Mr. Weinreb said, while paramedics were still trying to resuscitate Martin, Mr. Tsarnaev casually went to Whole Foods and bought a gallon of milk. “He hung out with friends, partied, and tweeted, ‘I’m a stress-free kind of guy,’ ” Mr. Weinreb said. “He acted like he didn’t have a care in the world.”

Mr. Tsarnaev showed his true colors during the shootout in Watertown with police, Mr. Weinreb said, lobbing pressure-cooker bombs at the officers. He said that after the shootout, Mr. Tsarnaev drove at the police at top speed, “trying to mow them down.” The police officers jumped out of the way and one tried to pull Tamerlan off to the side, but failed.

In describing one of the most vivid scenes from that night of mayhem, Mr. Weinreb said of Dzhokhar: “The defendant ran right over his brother and dragged his body about 50 feet down the street.”

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