Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, Boston Marathon Bomber, Massachusetts 2015

Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 21, a U.S. citizen formerly residing in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was sentenced to death for his role in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

On April 15, 2013, during the 117th running of the Boston Marathon, Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan placed two pressure cooker bombs filled with shrapnel among the crowds of spectators on Boylston Street and then detonated the bombs seconds apart, killing three people, maiming 17 and injuring hundreds more.

Tsarnaev was convicted of use of a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death and conspiracy; bombing of a place of public use resulting in death and conspiracy; malicious destruction of property resulting in death and conspiracy; use of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence; use of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence causing death; carjacking resulting in serious bodily injury; interference with commerce by threats or violence; and aiding and abetting.

On May 15, 2015, a federal jury in Boston recommended that Tsarnaev be sentenced to death. The same jury convicted Tsarnaev on all 30 counts of the indictment on April 8, 2015.

U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole of the District of Massachusetts formally sentenced Tsarnaev on June 24, to death and multiple consecutive life sentences.

This investigation was conducted by the FBI’s Boston Division, Boston Police Department, Massachusetts State Police, and member agencies of the Boston Joint Terrorism Task Force, including the ATF, HSI, U.S. Marshals Service, Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority and others. Tsarnaev was apprehended and arrested the night after the shootout with police in Watertown, Massachusetts.

The case against Tsarnaev was led by U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz of the District of Massachusetts, Assistant Attorney General for National Security John P. Carlin, Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Special Agent in Charge Vincent B. Lisi of the FBI’s Boston Division, Commissioner William B. Evans of the Boston Police Department, Colonel Timothy P. Alben of the Massachusetts State Police, Special Agent in Charge Daniel J. Kumor of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’s Boston Field Division and Deputy Special Agent in Charge Michael Shea of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (ICE-HSI) in Boston.

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