3.Closing Argument — Prosecution

MR. MELLIN: Thank you, your Honor.

Good morning.

MR. MELLIN: There's a certain clarity that comes to you when you are close to death. Remember the testimony of Jeff Bauman and Sydney Corcoran. Even as they lay bleeding on that sidewalk on Boylston Street, they made peace with death.

As the defendant lay bleeding in that boat, he too made peace with death. In his moment of clarity, he wrote what he thought would be his lasting testament. He wrote, "Now, I don't like killing innocent people, but in this case it is allowed because Americans need to be punished." No remorse, no apology. Those are the words of a terrorist convinced that he has done the right thing. He felt justified in killing and maiming and seriously injuring innocent men, women and children.

I want to start back on Boylston Street, back where the carnage began. Picture the scene on Boylston just before the first blast. It's a beautiful, sunny Patriots' Day. It's 2:45 p.m. And the defendant walks up. He walks up past the Forum restaurant, sees how crowded it is, and decides that's the place to put his bomb. He placed it there because his goal was to murder and mutilate. He wanted to murder as many people as possible.

When he looked up, what did he see? He saw that he had placed that bomb approximately four feet behind a row of children. Six-year-old Jane Richard, eight-year-old Martin Richard, 11-year-old Aaron Hern, 12-year-old Henry Richard. He was right here. The children were right there (indicating).

But seeing them didn't deter him. He didn't pick up that backpack, and he didn't move it. He didn't care if he killed them along with everyone else because he had already decided that killing innocents was justified. In fact, killing innocents was the whole point. It's the way you terrorize an entire population. The more vulnerable and unsuspecting the victim, the more terrifying the murder. The defendant picked the Boston Marathon. He picked the Forum restaurant. And he chose to remain there right by that tree because it was the best way he could punish his perceived enemies.

The defendant put the backpack down behind those children, and he waited.

MR. MELLIN: That was 20 seconds. He waited almost 12 times that long before giving his brother the go-ahead and then detonating his own bomb. Remember what Alan Hern said, the father of 11-year-old Aaron Hern. He said he was helpless trying to save Aaron. Remember what Steve Woolfenden said. He was terrified and helpless as little Leo was carried away, little Leo screaming for mommy and daddy, being handed off to strangers. Steve Woolfenden didn't know if he would live or die, and he didn't know if he would live to ever see Leo again. These fathers were helpless. They were helpless in saving the lives of their own children because of that defendant.

This is what terrorism looks like. It's Martin Richard bleeding on the ground in agony while his mother bends over him, injured in one eye, and begs him to stay alive, saying, "Please, Martin. Please, Martin."

It's Lingzi Lu screaming in pain as she dies on that street while her friend Danling tries to hold her abdominal organs inside.

It's Krystle Campbell, burned all over her body, filled with shrapnel, with smoke coming out of her mouth.

And it's Sean Collier, a loving son and dedicated public servant, sitting in his cruiser with three bullet holes in his head, dying as his own blood pools in that car seat.

And it's nearly 20 other people staring in shock at their mangled and ruined limbs when just moments before they were fine.

It's not just the dead and the wounded who were injured by the defendant's crimes. Others suffered unspeakable pain and will do so for the rest of their lives. Bill Richard told you that he had to choose between saving Jane, who was near certain death, or going back and seeing Martin in his last moments of life. Do you think that memory ever goes away? that pain ever goes away?

The defense will ask you to value the defendant's life, but he did not value the lives of his victims, not even the lives of children. He killed indiscriminately to make a political statement, and he placed no value on the lives and didn't care for a second what impact his actions and his killings would have on so many other innocent family members and friends. His actions have earned him a sentence of death.

There is so much death and loss and devastation in this case, it's hard to know where to begin. The defendant planted a bomb that led to painful eulogies and terrifying memories. Surviving family members were left to attend to funerals and live lives with bittersweet memories of those lost forever and painful reminders of what could have been.

You heard how Krystle Campbell was her dad's princess. She was the light in his life. He told you that she would call him every day. Now that light is out, and no phone call will ever come.

Krystle's brother told you how the family got word that Krystle was still alive and at the hospital. Finally, some good news on that awful day. Only it turned out it was Karen McWatters who was alive. Krystle was dead. You heard that Krystle's dad fainted when he heard that news. Two years later, Bill still feels the loss, the loss of his sister, and his son feels the loss of an amazing aunt.

Sean Collier was the moral compass in the family. Now he is gone forever. His brother told you that Sean loved helping people, and as Andrew said, there will always be a cloud over family events, forever. Or a cloud over the family tailgates at the Patriots' games. Joe Rogers will never be able to go to another game with Sean.

This is Sean's graduation. Mr. Rogers told you the happiest day of Sean's life. He was murdered while performing that job.

Even to this date, the pain and suffering and loss is too much to bear for that family. Sean Collier's murder caused his family a new world of pain. Joe Rogers told you how his wife can no longer go to work after seeing Sean murdered. She suffers from PTSD and could not even get out of bed for two months after Sean's murder.

Sean's mother cried the entire weekend of the second anniversary of his death, and Easter will never be the same for that family. If you remember, that was the last time the family got together before April 18th, 2013.

Chief DiFava told you that one word described Sean Collier: character. Now that character is gone. And two years later, the grief still remains. Lingzi Lu's aunt, Aunt Helen, told you that her parents were too devastated to come to the United States initially when they got the news. Lingzi was their only child, their future. That future ended on April 15th, 2013. She was her father's jolly elf. She was the beautiful nerd.

Lingzi's father read a poem at her memorial service. You heard it here in court: "There will be no bombs or terrorist attacks in its path. In tears, we hear you say, the forever young, 'Dear Mom and Dad, don't cry. I love you. If there is an afterlife, I will be your daughter again.'" Her dad.

Her father said, "She's gone. How can our living go on?" So unbelievably sad, and yet so true. Their pain will never go away.

Bill Richard knew immediately that there was no chance for Martin. He saw his little boy's severely damaged body. He embraced his son Henry for a moment and then told Henry, "You have to help me find Jane." After finding Jane, Bill Richard made sure she got the help she needed. Denise Richard was left with Martin for the final moments of his life. Martin's body was ultimately covered by a tablecloth on Boylston Street. Those are the lasting images Denise Richard has for the rest of her life.

And think back to what Bill Richard said about telling Jane about her brother's death. Jane was still in surgery, coming in and out of consciousness, and each time she was awake she would ask, "How is Martin?" And each time they had to tell her Martin was dead. That's another lasting memory for that family.

Bill Richard did tell you that he can "still hear the beautiful voices of my family." Unfortunately, because of this defendant, he will never hear Martin's voice again. So much loss and suffering for one family to bear. It's too much.

Martin will never get to play high school sports or attend college or form lifelong friendships. Life for the Richard parents and their children will never be the same. Every race is an awful reminder that Martin is not running and Martin is not there.

The defendant took all of that away from four lovely, loving, caring, positive people. This defendant blinded the mother, maimed their six-year-old daughter, ripping off her leg, and blew apart eight-year-old Martin right in front of their son and the father. There is no just punishment just for that other than death.

All of this loss is overwhelming in scope and impact, yet after causing all of this pain and suffering, this defendant bought a half gallon of milk without shedding a tear or expressing a care for the lives of the people that were forever altered or destroyed. He acted like it was any other day. He was stress free and remorse free.

He didn't care because the death and misery was what he sought that day. His actions destroyed so many families. And he, and he alone, is responsible for his actions in causing so much sadness, death and fear.

I want to turn briefly to the verdict form. We just went over it in detail. Your decision in this case will be assisted by kind of a record-keeping process. As Judge O'Toole has instructed you, the United States has to prove three elements before you reach the larger task, which is an assessment of a just punishment in this case. It's a lengthy form, but it will guide you through all of the steps.

And once you go through this form and this process and the weighing of the factors, you will see how the aggravating factors so clearly point to only one result: a sentence of death.

First, the government must prove the defendant was at least 18 in April of 2013. You know from his school records and from his naturalization documents that he was born on July 22nd, 1993. He was almost 20 years old in April 2013.

Second, we must prove at least one of the intent factors. As to the intent factors, the same evidence that supported your finding of intent in the guilt phase is the same evidence that will assist you in finding the intent in this phase.

Remember also a passage from the Inspire magazine, 2010. Page 33, it educates the defendant, right at the bottom, "In one or two days, the bomb could be ready to kill at least ten people. In a month, you may make a bigger and more lethal bomb that could kill tens of people." The defendant knew what kind of hell was going to happen and be unleashed, and he intended to kill people. How many did he think would die? You have heard throughout this case so much evidence of his intent, but just be mindful that there are four intent factors in this phase. You need only find one applies, but you should consider all four. And if you find all four factors apply, you should indicate that.

Now, why do these murders deserve the death penalty when other murders do not? The aggravating factors are circumstances that by law -- that the law says makes some murders worse than others. You need only find one statutory aggravating factor to justify a sentence of death, but in this case we have six.

First, the defendant didn't simply kill people; he killed them using a weapon of mass destruction. It's obvious why the law considers murders committed in that way to be worse than other murders. A weapon of mass destruction is a tool of terrorists. Its purpose is not to kill a particular victim; its purpose is to kill indiscriminately. And not just kill, but destroy.

Remember the massive fireball, the deafening explosion, the acrid smoke, the searing heat, the broken glass of the windows, the chaos and the noise, and the river of blood running down that sidewalk? All those things make weapons of mass destruction terrifying and make the deaths that they cause worse than others.

Second, the defendant killed multiple people in a single criminal episode. The number of deaths is seen by the law, understandably, as a reason to distinguish between murder cases. A case involving multiple killings should carry a greater punishment than a case involving a single killing. It's clear the defendant killed more than one person by using a weapon of mass destruction in this case.

Third, the defendant engaged in substantial planning and premeditation. The law punishes more harshly those like the defendant who take considerable time to deliberate, plan and carry out their murderous attacks. Between the time this whole conspiracy started and the time he finished carrying it out, the defendant had plenty of time to reflect, to reconsider and think better of this plan.

He didn't set out to commit acts of terrorism on an impulse. The whole plan was well thought out and a long time in the making. It began for him with reading terrorist writings and listening to terrorist lectures, adopting the beliefs that would enable him to kill without remorse. He read the Inspire article, "Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom." It's a recipe book for the bombs that were used in this case. Little Christmas lights, pipe bombs like the ones used in this case, and the pressure cookers.

The defendant acquired the 9-millimeter semiautomatic weapon. Remember the 9-millimeter gun? That's an essential ingredient in this plan as well. He got that from Stephen Silva in January or February 2013. He bought ammunition and practiced shooting the 9-millimeter at that firing range in Manchester. That was March 20th. On the very same day, he tweeted, "Evil triumphs when good men do nothing." "Evil triumphs."

On April 7th, the defendant tweeted, "If you have the knowledge and the inspiration, all that's left is to take action." April 7th. Within eight days they took action.

On April 14th, the day before, he purchased that SIM card, the SIM card he used to call his brother to give him the go-ahead to detonate the bomb. And he waited to commit these murders and these attacks on Patriots' Day, a school holiday and the day of the marathon. He did that so the bombings would be as terrifying and devastating as possible. And all of this is proof of substantial planning and premeditation.

Also consider how the defendant and his brother killed Officer Sean Collier. That was not impulsive or reflexive; it was an ambush. You saw how they deliberately walked together across the campus, and they went straight to the door of his car. They knew he was parked there. And once they got there, they did not hesitate because they knew exactly what they were going to do. They needed another gun, and they were going to murder him and take his service weapon.

At any point along this long journey to committing terrorism, the defendant could have reflected, reconsidered, and stood down. The fact that he marched resolutely on towards his goal makes him more culpable and his crimes worse. The fourth aggravating factor is that the defendant knowingly created a grave risk of death to additional persons other than the dead victims. Judge O'Toole instructed you that "a grave risk of death" means significant and considerable possibility that another person might be killed. In other words, putting others at risk in addition to those who died.

The defendant killed and helped kill four people. How many others did he nearly kill? Jim Hooley, the head of Boston EMS, he told you that he and other EMS workers sorted the wounded into three categories. Thirty of the wounded were given red tags -- 30 -- meaning that if they did not get to the hospital within 60 minutes, there was a high likelihood that they would die. But 60 minutes would have been an eternity to some who were wounded.

Sydney Corcoran told you that she felt her whole body go cold as blood flowed from her severed femoral artery on that sidewalk. Celeste Corcoran told you she remembered every detail of the blast. She suffered excruciating pain as both of her legs were destroyed. She said she just wanted to die because the pain was too much. When she finally had enough breath to breathe, she said she screamed in agony. She was left to try to recover in the same hospital room as her daughter Sydney, another family blown apart by this defendant and his brother.

Exhibit 20. Look at all of the mayhem. In the middle sits Jeff Bauman. Jeff Bauman described for you how he could see his bone, and all he could say was, "This is really messed up." He told you to this day he doesn't know how he stayed conscious throughout. All he said -- or as he said, "I knew my legs were gone. I knew it instantly."

You saw video of Marc Fucarile lying on the street on fire with a severed leg gushing blood. There's Marc Fucarile in the middle (indicating). Marc Fucarile had to endure more than 60 operations in the months after the bombings. Over 60. As Dr. King told you, every surgery is dangerous and can itself be life threatening.

And after all of those surgeries, Marc Fucarile still isn't out of the woods. His body is still filled with shrapnel. It's too dangerous to remove. And one of those pieces of shrapnel is lodged in his heart. At any time that could travel to his lungs, and he might die.

It's a miracle that Marc Fucarile, Jeff Bauman, Sydney Corcoran, Celeste Corcoran or so many others survived.

And none of this was by accident. Just the opposite. Remember what Inspire magazine says? Page 40 of the same volume. It recommends using a pressure cooker and placing it in a crowded area. In fact, what it says is, "With that said, here are some important steps to take for an effective explosive device: One, place the device in a crowded area; two, camouflage the device with something that would not hinder the shrapnel, such as cardboard."

You place it in a crowded area because that pressure cooker will be more effective in that crowded area. The grave risk of death to others is part of the reason why a pressure cooker bomb is so effective.

The fifth statutory aggravating factor is the cruel, heinous and depraved manner of committing the offense in that it involved serious physical abuse to the victims. Judge O'Toole just instructed you that "serious physical abuse" means a considerable amount of injury and damage to the body. "Cruel" means the defendant intended to inflict the high degree of pain by physical abuse to the victim in addition to just killing them.

The evidence that the defendant caused injury and damage to the victims' bodies could not be clearer. You saw the autopsy photos of Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell and Lingzi Lu. The bombs burned their skin, shattered their bones and ripped their flesh. It disfigured their bodies, twisted their limbs and punched gaping holes into their legs and torsos.

And none of that was accidental. It's what the defendant intended to do to them. That's the entire reason for filling the bombs with little nails and BBs and other tiny pieces of shrapnel, because merely killing a person isn't nearly as terrifying as shredding them apart.

Remember what was said in the Inspire magazine, again on page 40: "However, in order to fill, for example, a pressure cooker with a substance from matches, it may take a lot of matches to do so, and therefore you may want to use gunpowder or the powder from fireworks." Sound familiar? It goes on to say, "You need to also include shrapnel. The best shrapnel are the spherical-shaped ones. As you can see in the figures below, you need to glue them to the surface of your canister. (If steel pellets are not available, you may use nails instead.)"

That's exactly what the defendant did. You recall the testimony of those victims outside the Forum? They were full of nails and BBs.

The defendant wasn't out just to kill innocents in order to punish America. He wanted to torment them to make a political statement. He knew these bombs would make people suffer because murders are more terrifying and they make a better political statement this way. It's a better political statement if you force the victims to suffer, suffer excruciating pain in front of their parents and their friends. That's what the defendant did to Martin Richard.

Dr. King told you that Martin did not die right away and that the shattering of his arm and the twisting of his internal organs were excruciatingly painful.

Dr. Jennifer Hammers told you the same thing about Krystle's broken leg. You know that Krystle lived to experience that excruciating pain because you can see her here screaming on the sidewalk before she dies. And this, this is how Karen McWatters, her best friend, will have to remember her.

The same, of course, is true for Lingzi Lu. You saw the photos of her screaming as she lay dying, and you heard Danling tell you how it pained her that she couldn't help her, that she was of no use to her friend at that time.

The sixth statutory aggravating factor is the vulnerability of Martin Richard due to his youth. No one deserves to be killed by a terrorist bomb, but some people are more vulnerable, more vulnerable to the harm done. Can there be anyone more vulnerable than a little boy next to a weapon of mass destruction? In this case, an eight-year-old boy named Martin Richard. There isn't a part of his body that was not affected.

Both the chief medical examiner and Dr. King explained to you that Martin was more vulnerable because he was a little boy and his abdomen and key organs were closer to the ground. The defendant placed that bomb on the ground, so the smaller the victims were, the more exposed they were to the shrapnel. Martin, he was 53 inches, just over four feet tall, and he weighed 69 pounds.

Where the shrapnel from that bomb ripped apart the top of Lingzi Lu's legs, that same shrapnel headed right for the middle of Martin's midsection. Also because of Martin's youth, his body would not be able to sustain those injuries as long as an adult. The evidence shows you that there can be no doubt that Martin Richard was a vulnerable victim.

There are five other aggravating factors in this case. One is the impact of these crimes on the victims and their surviving family members. I already talked a little bit about the impact of the crimes on the families, and I won't say more at this point because I suspect you remember quite well what those family members had to say.

Another aggravating factor is the selection of the Boston Marathon as a targeted site for terrorism. Committing murder during an act of terrorism is enough by itself to make that murder worse than others, but choosing the Boston Marathon as the site for the terrorist attack makes it even worse.

That's in part because the Boston Marathon is a family event. It takes place on a school holiday. As Stephen Silva had told you, the defendant had gone to the marathon the year before, 2012. He knew that the marathon attracted families and that people go there with their friends, so he knew that his bomb was likely to kill and mutilate parents in front of their children or children in front of their parents or both.

He also knew that the last stretch down Boylston Street, all the way to the finish line, drew huge crowds. He knew that by placing his bomb there, he had a good chance of killing and injuring hundreds of people, which is exactly what happened.

He knew that the marathon draws an international crowd so that the news of his bombing would be of interest in every corner of the world. And he knew that the marathon is televised. His bombing would be played and replayed over and over again, allowing him to terrorize people not just in Boston, but all over the country and all over the world. And of course the marathon takes place on Patriots' Day, a day when we celebrate an important milestone in the birth of American independence. It's hard to think of a better place to murder people than the Boston Marathon if you want to make a political statement, if you want to make Americans -- or if you believe Americans are in need of punishment.

Another aggravating factor is that the defendant and his brother chose to murder Sean Collier precisely because he was a police officer, a police officer with a gun. Police officers carry guns because it is their job to protect us, and they put their lives at risk doing so. To kill a police officer makes all of us more vulnerable.

Sean Collier was a compassionate soul, a dedicated young man who had devoted himself to protecting everyone on that MIT campus, from the students to the homeless men who wandered onto campus. He was everything a police officer should be. The fact that the defendant and his brother targeted him because he was a police officer is another aggravating factor for you to consider.

Another factor is the defendant's participation in additional uncharged crimes of violence, like Judge O'Toole just talked about, like assault with a deadly weapon, or attempted murder on others. You heard plenty of evidence about how the defendant attempted to murder as many people as possible on Boylston Street and how close he came to murdering dozens.

I want to talk for just a minute about how hard he tried to kill other police officers, the officers in Watertown. Officer Reynolds told you that after he learned the police were looking for the Mercedes SUV, he saw it. He saw the defendant and his brother driving down in his direction. The defendant was in front.

When he passed them and made a U-turn to follow, the defendant turned down Laurel Street and his brother followed. And the defendant stopped in the middle of Laurel Street and his brother stopped behind him. Both got out.

What was the defendant planning when he stopped his car in the middle of Laurel Street and got out? You know what he was planning because you know what he did next. While his brother provided cover and shot at the officers, the defendant lit bombs, the pipe bombs, and a pressure cooker bomb, and hurdled them at the officers. His goal was to kill them.

His brother was also trying to kill them, and the defendant shared in that goal. You know that was exactly what he was trying to do because when his brother was on the ground and the officers were trying to arrest him, the defendant made one last attempt to kill police officers. He got back into that Mercedes, and instead of driving away from the officers where he had a clear route of escape, he turned around that SUV and drove it at top speed right at them. He didn't care that his brother was on the ground. He saw an opportunity to inflict even more pain, even more punishment on America, and he wasn't going to pass it up. Once again, he nearly succeeded.

Sergeant Pugliese rolled out of the way just in time, or he, like Tamerlan Tsarnaev, would likely have been run over and killed.

The last aggravator I want to discuss is the defendant's demonstrated and disturbing lack of remorse, his lack of remorse during the commission of the crime and on the date of the arraignment.

20 minutes -- 20 minutes -- after exploding his bomb, while his victims lay dead and dying and bleeding -- 20 minutes -- that's a lot less than 60 minutes that some of them had -- 20 minutes later, there's the defendant. He strolled into Whole Foods like it was an ordinary day and shopped for milk.

That same evening, at 8 p.m., he got on the Internet and tweeted to his friends, "Ain't no love in the heart of the city." "Ain't no love in the heart of the city." Hours after he fled the carnage that he had unleashed in Boston, he had the gall to tweet, "Ain't no love in the heart of the city." As to that, he couldn't have been more wrong. As the defendant sat at home drinking his milk and tweeting his glib commentary, the heartbreaking love of a mother comforting her dying child played out in the heart of Boston. Also on display were the bravery, the strength, the efforts of strangers trying to help those who had been injured, injured by the bomb planted by this defendant. He failed miserably in trying to blow apart the fabric of society. Make no mistake: Love prevailed in the heart of Boston on April 15th. But his true character was on display that night. It was on display in his words, in his callousness in that tweet.

The next day, April 16th, while victims awoke in cold, antiseptic hospitals to the new reality that they were amputees, the defendant went to the gym and worked out. An hour later, he tweeted this: "I'm a stress-free kind of guy." He's stress free, April 16th.

Then on April 18th, while Dun Meng, terrified, sits in the SUV with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the defendant walks into that ATM and coolly withdraws money from Meng's account like it's any other day. Later at the gas station, he slowly takes his time buying snacks for that trip to New York where he wants to unleash even more havoc.

And then finally, on July 10th, 2013, three months after the bombings, the defendant comes into court to be formally charged with murdering a little boy, murdering two women and a police officer. He has had months to reflect on the pain and suffering that he has caused. But when he's put in that holding cell, you cannot see a trace of remorse on his face. He paces, he fluffs his hair, and he makes obscene gestures at the marshals watching over him and watching over the surveillance cameras.

Who is capable of being so stress free after committing the crimes he committed? Who is capable of showing so little remorse? Only a terrorist, someone who had no reason for remorse because he believed that he had done something brave and something good. Someone who had set out to make a political statement, to commit a political crime and then firmly believed in the righteousness of what he had done.

Alone, and certainly together, these aggravating factors sufficiently outweigh any mitigating factors to justify your imposition of a sentence of death. Frankly, it's not even close. The magnitude and the gravity of the aggravating factors overwhelmingly tilt the scales of justice in only one direction.

The defense has proposed a number of mitigating factors. A number of them are unsurprisingly focused on the defendant's family life and his age. I want to discuss a few of those factors very briefly right now, and Mr. Weinreb will discuss them in greater detail during the government's rebuttal.

Many of these mitigating factors concern issues we all deal with in our daily lives every single day. These factors are deserving of little weight in your analysis. None of the factors about the defendant's age or childhood meaningfully mitigate the terrorist attacks in this case.

His age: The defendant was almost 20 years old when he committed these crimes, old enough to know right from wrong. At 18, young men and women leave home. They join the military, start families, and they can vote. The law states that a defendant must be at least 18 before a sentence of death may be imposed. Because when you are 18 or older, you are responsible for your actions. Dr. Giedd's observations regarding the development of the brain are in line with the law, and the law was informed by these understandings.

Now, you heard an enormous amount of evidence in this case about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but Tamerlan Tsarnaev was not the defendant's master. They were partners in crime and brothers in arms. Each had a role to play, and each played it. Both came to believe in the teachings of Anwar al-Awlaki and the other terrorists. Both decided that they wanted to punish America in a way that would win them glory and win them a place in paradise. The defendant would like to focus all of your attention on something you can never know, namely, what influence, if any, did Tamerlan Tsarnaev have on the defendant's decision to commit these crimes? You can't know it because there's no evidence of it in this case. What you do know from the evidence is what things the defendant actually did and what he wrote. Those are the things that really matter in deciding what his punishment should be.

The defendant independently got the gun used to murder Officer Sean Collier. He independently chose the Forum restaurant as a bombing site, and he stayed there in spite of the children. He called his brother to initiate the attack. And because of his actions and role in this conspiracy, he maimed Jeff Bauman, Erika Brannock, Celeste Corcoran, Mery Daniel, Rebekah Gregory, Patrick Downes, Jessica Kensky, Karen McWatters, William White, Heather Abbott, Roseann Sdoia, Marc Fucarile, Paul Norden, JP Norden, Adrianne Haslet-Davis, Steve Woolfenden, and little Jane Richard, whose leg looked like it went through a meat grinder, as Matt Patterson described it.

The defendant murdered Krystle Campbell, Martin Richard and Lingzi Lu. He returned to UMass Dartmouth in secret triumph and posted tweets that reflected his satisfaction with his own work. Not once in those tweets does he say, "Tamerlan made me do it."

He independently returned to Cambridge when he saw his face on the news to rejoin his brother for their final acts of terror. He murdered Sean Collier. He tried to steal his gun. He robbed Dun Meng. He loaded bombs in the Mercedes. He went to buy the Red Bull and snacks for the trip to New York. And when the police caught up with him, he led the way to the site of the last stand. He tried to kill the officers, first with bombs and then with an SUV, without any help from his brother or anyone else. He wrote a manifesto that explained their actions and took credit for what they had done.

As the defendant so clearly wrote, "I can't stand to see such evil go unpunished." That's what he wrote. "I can't stand." "I," not "we." Not "my brother." Nowhere in that manifesto does he write, "My brother made me do it."

What deserves more weight: the things the defendant did in his written confession of guilt or the speculation about what Tamerlan might have said? You heard that the defendant learned the value of love and caring and support from his family and friends, yet he made a conscious decision to destroy loving and caring families without any regard for the consequences. In total, the mitigating factors are essentially weightless when compared to the gravity of the terror, devastation and murder perpetrated by the defendant.

Now, some of you expressed the opinion during voir dire that a life sentence may be worse than death. You now know, after hearing from Warden John Oliver, the warden at ADX, his life will not be worse than death. He won't be put in a dungeon. He won't be in a black hole. He'll have his own cell with a window. He'll take separate showers. He'll have a toilet and a sink. He can view prison programming in his cell. He can take courses and get a college degree. He can write a book. He can exercise inside and outside of his cell. He'll be able to talk to other inmates and to the staff. And he won't need to deal with the fear of others hurting him because the staff will be there.

He will be able to visit with family and approved contacts. He gets to see them in person, speak with them on the phone and exchange an unlimited number of letters. Unlimited. He can ultimately step down and have more privileges.

He is a young man in good health. As you've heard, SAMs restrictions are not permanent. They must be renewed yearly. And they can only be renewed if they meet the requirements. If those restrictions are lifted, he will be allowed more privileges and more contacts. Times change. No one can predict the future. But his life will not be worse than death, especially if he steps down during that process. This defendant does not want to die. You know that because he had many opportunities to die on the streets of Boston and Watertown. But unlike his brother, he made a different choice. In the manifesto he wrote in the boat, he praises his brother for dying a martyr, but he did everything in his power to avoid becoming one himself. He didn't take on the officers after he ran out of pipe bombs. The defendant managed to escape. He escaped in Dun Meng's SUV down Laurel Street, and then he hid -- he ran, and then he hid in the boat.

A death sentence is not giving him what he wants. It is giving him what he deserves.

This is a solemn day. Nothing is ever going to bring back Krystle Campbell, Lingzi Lu, Martin Richard or Officer Sean Collier. No one will ever be able to put the amputees back in the position they were to run on their own two legs again. We understand this is a weighty decision, and we appreciate the need to be circumspect and thoughtful in making that decision, but you all said in the right case, if the government proved it was an extreme case, a heinous case, that you could vote to impose a sentence of death. This is that case.

Don't be swayed by the many cute photos you saw of the defendant as a child. All murderers start out as cute children, but sometimes cute children grow up to be bad people. When the defendant became an adult, he changed into someone else. He found terrorist writings, he found terrorist lectures, and read and listened to them. He found them compelling and convincing, so much so that he became one of the extremely few people in the world who acted on those. He acted on the beliefs and the writings and the lectures, and he acted on it to carry out a terrorist attack.

He was an adult. He made an adult decision and the damage will last forever. Now he has to face the consequences. He struck at what citizens hold dear to cause the greatest amount of pain, fear and panic. He went after the core values of society: children, family, neighborhoods, public safety.

After all of the carnage and fear and terror that he has caused, the right decision is clear. It is your job to determine a just sentence. The only sentence that will do justice in this case is a sentence of death.

Thank you.