Boston bombing jury sees bullet-pocked message

As he lay inside a homeowner’s boat in Watertown, Mass., five nights after the Boston Marathon bombing, prosecutors say, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev scrawled in pencil his justification for having taken part in the attack: avenging the deaths of Muslims at the hands of the United States, and his desire to reach the heavenly paradise that he thought his brother, who died hours earlier, had already attained.

The text of the message, written on the inside of the hull, had been previously revealed. But the government publicly displayed photographs of the note for the first time Tuesday, in front of jurors hearing Tsarnaev’s capital murder case in U.S. District Court here. Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty to 30 counts stemming from the 2013 bombing, including 17 that carry the death penalty; his defense team has said that although he participated in the bombing, he did so under the sway of his older brother, Tamerlan.

The note the prosecutors showed the jury was interrupted in places by at least 11 bullet holes made by the police during the night of April 19, 2013, before the capture of an injured Tsarnaev, who had been hiding inside the boat.

The note was found by Todd Brown, a Boston police officer and bomb expert sent to search the boat for explosives and weapons after Tsarnaev’s surrender.