Boston bombing trial opens with visceral emotion
BOSTON – Jurors dabbed their eyes and held back tears Wednesday at the opening of the Boston Marathon bombing trial, a day when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's lawyer said bluntly, "It was him."
Lawyers' arguments and survivors' testimony established a tone of gut-wrenching emotion.
It also answered key questions about the trial.
Victims who lost limbs and nearly died at the marathon finish line cried on the witness stand as prosecutors played amateur videos of bloody carnage. Rebekah Gregory of Houston told how she tried to help her 5-year-old son, Noah, who cried, "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy," but her injuries were too severe.
"My bones were lying next to me on the sidewalk," Gregory said from the stand, a few feet from Tsarnaev. "At that point, I felt that was the day I would die."
Prosecutors wasted no time eliciting emotional reactions to the devastation caused by two pressure-cooker bombs April 15, 2013. They questioned some of the most severely injured victims moments after opening arguments, when they said Tsarnaev thought he had done a good deed.
"He believed that he was a soldier in a holy war against Americans," said Assistant U.S. Attorney William Weinreb in his opening argument. "He believed he had taken a step toward reaching paradise. That was his motive for committing these crimes."
Before the opening arguments, court watchers wondered whether U.S. District Judge George O'Toole would permit gory depictions of carnage.
"The question will be: How much will the prosecutors be allowed to present the horror of the event?" said former federal judge Nancy Gertner, who teaches at Harvard Law School. "Autopsy photos — how much of those photos will be allowed to come in? How incendiary will the evidence be, literally? That's up for the judge."
Wednesday's proceedings gave a strong indication that O'Toole intends to let the horror be felt on an extremely visceral level. Photos and videos showing shrapnel-filled legs and bloodstained sidewalks, for example, are fair game.
The defense answered another key question when attorney Judy Clarke acknowledged that Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, were behind the bombings. If anyone was wondering who dropped a backpack on Boylston Street moments before the second bomb went off, she had the answer.
"It was him," she said. The bombings were "senseless, horribly misguided acts carried out by two brothers – 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev."
Tsarnaev, 21, has pleaded not guilty to a 30-count indictment that could bring the death penalty if he is convicted on any of the 17 most serious charges.
Even though Clarke acknowledged his involvement, the trial is by no means finished. The defense intends to show he was heavily influenced by his brother, and Clarke strongly disagreed with prosecutors who said he penned a "manifesto" while hiding inside a backyard boat before he was caught.
"Dzhokhar must be held responsible," she said, for his role in "a path born of his brother, paved by his brother."
Wednesday's proceedings offered a glimpse of what's apt to be a central tension in the trial. The defense wants jurors to see Tsarnaev as an impressionable teenager strongly influenced by an Islamic extremist older brother who underwent jihadi training in Russia for six months. O'Toole interrupted opening arguments to say only "very limited evidence" of Tamerlan's influence would be permitted.
Once the landscape for the trial was framed, prosecutors spent the first day cataloging harm done in the attack. About two dozen victims and their family members watched from one section of the courtroom, where they exchanged comforting gestures during the most intense moments.
Tsarnaev showed little emotion through the day. He avoided eye contact with witnesses but appeared to watch video evidence when it played on a screen directly in front of him.
Among the victims in the courtroom was double-amputee Celeste Corcoran, who listened as her daughter, Sydney, told her story on the stand.
They'd just arrived as a family at the finish line when the first explosion filled the area with smoke. Moments later, Sydney recalled a man putting his forehead to hers, promising she'd be OK — but the 17-year-old's femoral artery was severed, and she could feel her body shutting down.
"He could see that I was going white," Sydney said. "My body was getting tingly. I was getting increasingly cold, and I knew that I was dying." Surgeons harvested a vein and saved her artery, but she's needed about seven more surgeries since then and has numerous scars.
Prosecutors will continue their presentation of evidence Thursday. The trial is likely to last three to four months.