Boston bomber on death row

A jury in Boston has voted to execute Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, refuting his lawyers' argument that he was pulled into the plot by his radicalized Muslim older brother and overcoming Massachusetts' popular opposition to the death penalty. Tsarnaev said nothing when the verdict was announced yesterday at about 3:30pm EDT. He sat in his chair and swallowed, and remained expressionless as U.S. District Judge George O'Toole thanked members of the jury, some of whom wept. After he is formally sentenced by O'Toole, Tsarnaev will likely end up at the U.S. Bureau of Prison's death row in Terra Haute, Indiana, where he is expected to embark on an appeals process that could last years before he is finally killed by lethal injection. At 21, he will become the youngest person on federal death row. But in the short term, the sentence closes a major chapter in Boston's recovery from the April 15, 2013 bombing, in which twin blasts rocked the race's crowded downtown finish line, killing three spectators, injuring more than 260 others, and inflicting a grievous psychological wound on one of America's oldest cities. The explosions, on a local holiday marking the opening battles of the Revolutionary War, were the worst act of terror on American soil since 9/11. Let's hope James Holmes also gets put on death row.