(AP Photo/Jane Flavell Collins)BOSTON (
MyFoxBoston.com / AP) - Lawyers for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev returned to federal court Monday to make their case that he should be spared the death penalty.
Tsarnaev's defense team presented opening statements and witnesses Monday in the penalty phase of his trial - the stage that will determine whether he is executed or spends the rest of his life behind bars.
During opening statements, defense attorney David Bruck made the case that Dzhokhar was influenced by his older brother. Bruck pushed for life without parole and showed a photo of the federal Supermax prison in Colorado that Tsarnaev would most likely end up in if given that punishment.
He appealed to jurors that life imprisonment would mean that Tsarnaev would fade from public view and there would not be repeated appeals like there could be if he were sentenced to life.
Jury expert Edward Schwartz also said the defense's argument that a life in a Supermax prison will be worse than death, is one he's seen before, but a case for martyrdom in his death could sway the jury.
It only take one juror to vote no on the death penalty for Tsarnaev to be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
Tsarnaev already has been convicted of 30 federal charges in the twin bombings that killed three spectators and injured more than 260 others on April 15, 2013. Seventeen of those charges carry the possibility of the death penalty.
Prosecutors are pushing for execution. Their case in this second phase of the trial lasted just three days. Tsarnaev's defense is expected to take up to two weeks.
