Jury sees accused Boston bomber’s bombs, bloody sweatshirt

By Elizabeth Barber

BOSTON (Reuters) – The Boston Marathon bombing trial jury on Wednesday saw two sides of defendant Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, in pipe bombs he is charged with hurling at police four days after the attack and the sweatshirt stained with his own blood he was arrested in.

FBI forensic examiner D.J. Fife had been called to the witness stand by federal prosecutors to testify about the approximately $900 in cash Tsarnaev was carrying at the time of his arrest, most of which he allegedly stole from a carjacking victim.

But defense lawyers turned his testimony to the ripped Adidas sweatshirt that was cut from the 21-year-old defendant’s body in a hospital after he was found hiding in a boat in a Watertown, Massachusetts, backyard at the end of a daylong manhunt.

Tsarnaev, 21, is charged with killing three people and injuring 264 with a pair of homemade bombs at the race’s crowded finish line on April 15, 2013, and with fatally shooting a university police officer three days later.

His lawyers opened the trial early this month by bluntly admitting “it was him” that carried out the bombing and shooting. Their goal is to convince the jury that the plot was driven by his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, with Dzhokhar a junior partner in the scheme.

Proving that point could persuade the jury to sentence the younger brother to life in prison without possibility of parole, rather than death. His lawyers have tried in the past two days to play up that angle, and a defense attorney on Wednesday asked Fife if Tsarnaev was “visibly quite injured” when the sweatshirt was cut from his body.

“Yes,” Fife replied.

Earlier, Massachusetts State Trooper Robert McCarthy described the frantic calls for the bomb squad that came over his radio early on April 19, 2013, when Tsarnaev and his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, began tossing homemade devices at police.

During a gunfight, hours after the Tsarnaevs are accused of fatally shooting the officer, the pair threw one bomb of the same apparent design as the pressure-cooker devices they set off at the race, prior witnesses have testified. Witnesses have described that bomb as temporarily blurring their vision and shaking houses.

The unexploded metal bombs shown in court were filled with explosive powder and lined with metal pellets used in BB guns, said McCarthy, adding that one was an “improvised grenade” designed to explode where it landed, without rolling.

The Watertown gunfight ended when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hopped into a black Mercedes and attempted to run over three police officers who were trying to arrest Tamerlan. The officers hopped out of the way but Dzhokhar ran straight over his brother, who was briefly caught up in the vehicle’s wheels and dragged.

The jury also saw a photo of the Mercedes’ bloodied bumper.

The bombing killed restaurant manager Krystle Campbell, 29, graduate student Lingzi Lu, 23, and 8-year-old Martin Richard. Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, 27, was shot dead three days later.

(Editing by Scott Malone and James Dalgleish)