BOSTON (
MyFoxBoston.com) -- The jury in the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev trial is about to make the ultimate decision, the decision whether he should pay the ultimate price for his role in the Boston Marathon bombing.
Weeks of testimony are over, and in Courtroom 9 of US District Court in South Boston after closing statements are done, the jury of seven women and five men will set about the grim task of sentencing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to either life in a federal prison, or death by lethal injection.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is convicted of 17 counts that make him eligible for the death penalty. Once the jury retires to a jury room, the foreman will direct the jurors through the charges.
"I don't think they'll rush, but I also think they've seen it all, and its time to close the chapter. close this horrific chapter," said Boston attorney Phil Tracey. "I think they got to work through each count. The question will be should it be death, or life in prison. In other words, instead of guilty or not guilty, they'll have a different kind of blotter to work on. And they are going to have to go through all 17."
The Tsaranev jury will weigh aggravating factors of each crime, the cruelty, the indifference to human suffering, against mitigating the factors, Dzhokhar's troubled home life, his radical older brother, until it decides, on each of the 17 counts,
To condemn Tsarnaev to death, the 12 jurors must unanimously agree to vote for death.
If one juror disagrees, it's life in prison.
Because this jury has been together so long, Tracey says their verdict could come quickly.
"They have agreed at one time. They know how each other thinks, and therefore that may be the most interesting thing about how they related to each other if there's a disagreement about the penalty."
