The prosecution rested its case today in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the ethnic Chechen facing the death penalty for his role in the Boston Marathon bombings.
Prosecutors yielded to the defense after summoning 92 witnesses to the stand over the past weeks as they built a case against the 21-year-old as an active and willing participant in the bombings that ripped through crowds gathered near the finish line of the famous race on April 15, 2013.
Three people were killed and 264 others wounded in the blasts, the worst in the United States since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The prosecution's final witness was forensic expert Henry Nields, who recounted in gruesome detail the injuries suffered by the youngest victim, eight-year-old Martin Richard, who was torn apart by the pressure-cooker bomb that Tsarnaev placed in the crowd near the finish line.
The child's clothing was shown to jurors, some of whom were unable to hold back tears.
They also were shown photographs of the Richard family, standing on the race's sidelines in front of Tsarnaev. Another showed Martin Richard lying on the ground.
From the start of the trial, the defense has acknowledged Tsarnaev's role in the bombing, but has advanced the idea that he was under the influence of his older brother Tamerlan, 26, who was killed three days after the bombings in a shoot-out with police.
The younger Tsarnaev was unreadable today, as he has been throughout the trial, his head down as witnesses testified or occasionally talking with his lawyer, Judy Clarke.
