In this courtroom sketch, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, right, stands before U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. as he addresses the court during his sentencing
Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev broke his silence on the death and devastation he caused two years ago with words that were not a political tirade or a justification.
He apologized to his victims and their families at his formal sentencing Wednesday (yesterday, Macau time) in federal court.
“I am sorry for the lives that I’ve taken, for the suffering that I’ve caused you, for the damage that I’ve done — irreparable damage,” the 21-year-old former college student said, speaking haltingly in his Russian accent.
But some bombing survivors saw his apology as disingenuous and incomplete.
“After we heard it, we wished we hadn’t,” said Lynn Julian, who suffered a traumatic brain injury and a back injury, and now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.
“He threw in an apology to the survivors that seemed insincere,” she said.
U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said Tsarnaev’s statement was more noteworthy for what he didn’t say.
“He didn’t renounced terrorism. He didn’t renounce violent extremism,” she said.
After Tsarnaev said his piece, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. quoted a line from Shakespeare. “The evil that men do lives after them. The good is often interred with their bones,” he said.
“So it will be for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev,” the judge said, telling 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,” O’Toole said.
Tsarnaev looked down and rubbed his hands together as the judge pronounced his fate: execution, the punishment decided by the jury last month for the 2013 attack that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others.
The apology came after Tsarnaev listened for about three hours as a procession of 24 victims and survivors lashed out at him for his “cowardly” and “disgusting” acts.
“He can’t possibly have had a soul to do such a horrible thing,” said Karen Rand McWatters, who lost a leg in the attack and whose best friend, 29-year-old Krystle Campbell, was killed. Denise Lavoie, Legal Affairs Writer, Boston, AP
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