Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ‘influenced by brother’

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev went on trial for his life in the Boston Marathon bombing with his own lawyer bluntly telling the jury he committed the crime. But she argued he had fallen under the influence of his older brother.

“It was him”, Judy Clarke, one of the nation’s foremost death-penalty defence attorneys, said of Tsarnaev in a startling opening statement in the biggest terrorism trial in the US since the Oklahoma City bombing nearly 20 years ago.

Laying out an argument aimed at saving Tsarnaev not from a guilty verdict but from the death penalty, Clarke said that the defence will not try to “sidestep” his involvement in the “senseless, horribly misguided acts carried out by two brothers”.

“The evidence will not establish, and we will not argue, that Tamerlan put a gun to Dzhokhar’s head or that he forced him to join in the plan but you will hear evidence about the kind of influence that this older brother had,” Clarke said,

Prosecutors, for their part, used their opening statements to sketch out the scene of horror at the marathon. They accused Tsarnaev of cold-bloodedly planting a bomb designed to “tear people apart and create a bloody spectacle,” and hanging out with his college friends afterward as if nothing had happened.

“He believed he was a soldier in a holy war against Americans. He also believed by winning that victory, he had taken a step toward reaching paradise.

“That was his motive for committing these crimes” said assistant US Attorney William Weinreb.

A shaggy-haired, goateed Tsarnaev, 21, slouched in his seat and showed no reaction as Weinreb spoke, not even when the prosecutor described how Tsarnaev ran over his brother with a stolen Mercedes and dragged the body 15 metres during a furious shootout with police.

Three people were killed and more than 260 hurt when two bombs exploded on April 15, 2013. Tsarnaev, then 19, is accused of carrying out the attacks with his brother Tamerlan, 26, who was killed in the getaway attempt days later.

Prosecutors contend the brothers — ethnic Chechens who arrived from Russia more than a decade ago — were driven by anger over US wars in Muslim lands.

Because of the wealth of evidence against the younger brother, including a video of him leaving a backpack at the scene, and graffiti scrawled on the boat where he was captured, legal experts have said all along that there is little chance of escaping conviction.

Instead they said, Tsarnaev’s lawyers will concentrate on saving him from a death sentence during the penalty phase of the case by arguing Tamerlan was the driving force in the plot and that Dzhokhar was manipulated into taking part.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev has been implicated in the grisly 2011 slayings near Boston of three men. Their throats were slit, and marijuana was scattered on their bodies.

Among those in court was Heather Abbott, who lost a leg in the attack. None of the victims came in on crutches or in wheelchairs; all appeared to walk under their own power.

Weinreb said Tsarnaev carried a bomb in a backpack, and it was “the type of bomb favoured by terrorists because it’s designed to tear people apart and create a bloody spectacle.”

The trial is expected to last three to four months.

Clarke has saved a string of high-profile clients from the death penalty, including Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph; Unabomber Ted Kaczynski; and Jared Loughner, who killed six people and gravely wounded then-Republican Gabrielle Giffords in a 2011 shooting in Tucson, Arizona.