No decision after first day of Boston bombing trial

BOSTON — The first full day of jury deliberations in the Boston Marathon bombing trial ended on Thursday without a decision on whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev would be sentenced to death or to life in prison for the deadly 2013 attack.

The same 12 jurors who found the 21-year-old guilty in April of killing three people and wounding 264 at the race’s crowded finish line, have been instructed to weigh a list of aggravating and mitigating factors reprising the trial’s key themes.

In the prosecution’s view, Tsarnaev is an unrepentant mass killer. The defence has painted him as a hapless college kid who was influenced by his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan.

Prosecutors argued that Tsarnaev is a jihadist who chose the world-renowned race as the best place to kill and maim as many people as possible, including children, for whom the day is a school holiday.

They said the defendant has shown no remorse for crimes he justified as vengeance for U.S. military campaigns in Muslim-dominated countries.

Tsarnaev was convicted of murdering eight-year-old Martin Richard, 23-year-old Chinese graduate student Lingzi Lu, 29-year-old restaurant manager Krystle Campbell and Massachusetts Institute of Technology policeman Sean Collier.

U.S. District Judge George O’Toole told the jurors to consider whether Dzhokhar intended to kill people.