The Boston Marathon Bombing Part I

The Boston Marathon bombing was a domestic terrorist attack that took place during the annual Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Two terrorists, brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, planted two homemade pressure cooker bombs, which detonated 14 seconds and 210 yards (190 m) apart at 2:49 p.m., near the finish line of the race, killing three people and injuring hundreds of others, including 17 who lost limbs.

Three days later, on April 18, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released images of two suspects. They were later identified as the Tsarnaev brothers, who were Chechen Kyrgyzstani-Americans. Following their identification, at 10:35 p.m., they killed an MIT policeman. At 11:00 p.m., they kidnapped a man in his car. At 12:15 a.m., on April 19, the man escaped. At 12:45 a.m., they had a shootout with the police in nearby Watertown, during which two officers were severely injured (one of whom, DJ Simmonds, died a year later). Tamerlan was shot several times, and his brother Dzhokhar ran him over while escaping in the stolen car. Tamerlan died soon after.

An unprecedented manhunt for Dzhokhar ensued with thousands of law enforcement officers searching a 20-block area of Watertown. Residents of Watertown and surrounding communities were asked to stay indoors, and the transportation system and most businesses and public places closed. Around 6:00 p.m., a Watertown resident discovered Dzhokhar hiding in a boat in his backyard. Dzhokhar was shot and wounded by police before being taken into custody.

During questioning, Dzhokhar said that he and his brother were motivated by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that they were self-radicalized and unconnected to any outside terrorist groups, and that he was following his brother's lead. He said they learned to build explosive devices from the online magazine of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. He also said they had intended to travel to New York City to bomb Times Square. On April 8, 2015, he was convicted of 30 charges, including use of a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property resulting in death.

Two months later, he was sentenced to death, though in July 2020 the sentence was vacated by the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. On March 22, 2021, a writ of certiorari was granted by the Supreme Court of the United States, which considered the questions of whether the lower court erred in vacating the death sentence. The Supreme Court heard arguments on October 13, 2021, as United States v. Tsarnaev; on March 4, 2022, the Court upheld the death penalty, reversing the First Circuit Court's decision.

Bombing

The 117th annual Boston Marathon was run on Patriots' Day, April 15, 2013. At 2:49 p.m. EDT (18:49 UTC), two bombs detonated about 210 yards (190 m) apart at the finish line on Boylston Street near Copley Square. The first exploded outside Marathon Sports at 671–673 Boylston Street at 2:49:43 p.m. At the time of the first explosion, the race clock at the finish line showed 04:09:43 – the elapsed time since the Wave 3 start at 10:40 a.m. The second bomb exploded at 2:49:57 p.m., 14 seconds later and one block farther west at 755 Boylston Street. The explosions took place nearly three hours after the winning runner crossed the finish line, but with more than 5,700 runners yet to finish.

Windows on adjacent buildings were blown out, but there was no structural damage. Runners continued to cross the line until 2:57 p.m.

Casualties and initial response

Rescue workers and medical personnel, on hand as usual for the marathon, gave aid as additional police, fire, and medical units were dispatched, including from surrounding cities as well as private ambulances from all over the state. The explosions killed 3 civilians and injured an estimated 265 others, who were treated at 27 local hospitals. At least 14 people required amputations, with some suffering traumatic amputations as a direct result of the blasts.

Police, following emergency plans, diverted all remaining runners to Boston Common and Kenmore Square. The nearby Lenox Hotel and other buildings surrounding the scene were evacuated. Immediately after the bombing occurred and medically injured people were transported, the police closed a 15-block area around the blast site; this was reduced to a 12-block crime scene the next day. Boston police commissioner Edward F. Davis recommended that people stay off the streets.

Dropped bags and packages, abandoned as their owners fled from the blasts, increased uncertainty as to the possible presence of more bombs and many false reports were received. Simultaneously an electrical fire at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in nearby Dorchester was initially feared to be a bomb.

Emergency services at work after the bombing

The airspace over Boston was restricted, and departures halted from Boston's Logan International Airport. Some local transit service was halted as well.

The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency suggested people trying to contact those in the vicinity use text messaging instead of voice calls because of crowded cellphone lines. Cellphone service in Boston was congested but remained in operation, despite some local media reports stating that cell service was shut down to prevent cell phones from being used as detonators.

The American Red Cross helped concerned friends and family receive information about runners and casualties. The Boston Police Department also set up a call helpline for people concerned about relatives or acquaintances to contact and a line for people to provide information. Google Person Finder activated their disaster service under Boston Marathon Explosions to log known information about missing people as a publicly viewable file.

Due to the closure of several hotels near the blast zone, a number of visitors were left with nowhere to stay; many Boston-area residents opened their homes to them.

Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation led the investigation, assisted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. It was initially believed by some that North Korea was behind the attack after escalating tensions and threats with the U.S.

United States government officials stated that there had been no intelligence reports suggesting such an attack. Representative Peter King, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said: "I received two top secret briefings last week on the current threat levels in the United States, and there was no evidence of this at all."

After being identified, the father of the two suspects claimed that the FBI had been watching his family. He stated that they visited his sons' home in Cambridge, Massachusetts five times, most recently in 2011, as "preventive work... afraid there might be some explosions on the streets of Boston".

Evidence found near the blast sites included bits of metal, nails, ball bearings, black nylon pieces from a backpack, remains of an electronic circuit board, and wiring. A pressure cooker lid was found on a nearby rooftop. Both of the improvised explosive devices were pressure cooker bombs manufactured by the bombers. Authorities confirmed that the brothers used bomb-making instructions found in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's Inspire magazine. After the suspects were identified, The Boston Globe reported that Tamerlan purchased fireworks from a fireworks store in New Hampshire.

On April 19, the FBI, West New York Police Department, and Hudson County Sheriff's Department seized computer equipment from the apartment of the Tsarnaevs' sister in West New York, New Jersey. On April 24, investigators reported that they had reconstructed the bombs, and believed that they had been triggered by remote controls used for toy cars.

April 18–19 shootings and manhunt

Release of suspect photos

Jeff Bauman was immediately adjacent to one of the bombs and lost both legs; he wrote while in the hospital: "Bag, saw the guy, looked right at me". He later gave a detailed description of the suspects, which enabled images of them to be identified and circulated quickly.

At 5:20 p.m. on April 18, the FBI released images of two suspects carrying backpacks, asking the public's help in identifying them. The FBI said that they were doing this in part to limit harm to people wrongly identified by news reports and on social-media. As seen on video, the suspects stayed to observe the chaos after the explosions, then walked away casually. The public sent authorities a deluge of photographs and videos, which were scrutinized by both authorities and online public social networks.

MIT shooting and carjacking

Around 7:40 pm, a few hours after the photos were released, the Tsarnaev brothers ambushed and shot Sean A. Collier of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Department six times in an attempt to steal his Smith & Wesson M&P45 sidearm, which they could not free from his holster because of its security retention system. Collier, aged 27, was seated in his police car near Building 32 on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus. He died soon after.

The brothers then carjacked a Mercedes-Benz M-Class SUV in the Allston-Brighton neighborhood of Boston. Tamerlan took the owner, Chinese national Dun "Danny" Meng (Chinese: 孟盾), hostage and told him that he (Tamerlan) was responsible for the Boston bombing and for killing a police officer. Dzhokhar followed them in their green Honda Civic, later joining them in the Mercedes-Benz. Interrogation later revealed that the brothers "decided spontaneously" that they wanted to go to New York and bomb Times Square.

The Tsarnaev brothers forced Meng to use his ATM cards to obtain $800 in cash. They transferred objects to the Mercedes-Benz and one brother followed it in their Civic, for which an all-points bulletin was issued. The Tsarnaev brothers then drove to a Shell gas station to fill up for a long ride to Times Square, New York City to set off more explosives. But while Dzhokhar went inside to pay for junk-food, Meng, fearing that the suspects would harm him during the long drive, escaped from the Mercedes and ran across the street to the Mobil gas station, asking the clerk to call 911. His cell phone remained in the vehicle, allowing the police to focus their search on Watertown.

Watertown shootout

Shortly after midnight on April 19, Watertown police officer Joseph Reynolds identified the brothers in the Honda and the stolen Mercedes after overhearing radio traffic that the vehicle was "pinged" by Cambridge officers on Dexter Avenue in Watertown. Reynolds followed the vehicle while waiting for additional units to perform a high-risk traffic stop when the suspect vehicles both turned onto Laurel Street and stopped at the intersection of Laurel and Dexter.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev stepped out of the Mercedes and immediately opened fire on Officer Reynolds and Sergeant John MacLellan, who both returned fire and requested emergency assistance over their radios. A gun battle ensued between Tsarnaev, the aforementioned officers, and subsequent additional police responding to the "shots fired" radio transmissions from Reynolds and MacLellan in the 100 block of Laurel St. An estimated 200 to 300 rounds of ammunition were fired, 56 of which were later determined to have been fired from the suspects, and at least one pressure cooker bomb and several "crude grenades" were thrown.

The agencies involved in the nearly seven-minute shootout included the Watertown Police Department, Cambridge Police Department, Boston Police Department, Massachusetts State Police (MSP), Boston University Police Department, and MBTA Transit Police Department. Most of the officers involved were equipped by their respective agencies with either the Glock 22 or Glock 23 .40 S&W-caliber pistols. MSP troopers were armed with Smith & Wesson M&P45 pistols chambered in .45 ACP; this led investigators to match the 9mm casings and projectiles found at the scene to the suspects' 9mm Ruger P95 pistol.

According to Watertown Police Chief Edward Deveau, the brothers had an "arsenal of guns". Tamerlan eventually ran out of ammunition and threw his empty Ruger pistol at Watertown PD Sergeant Jeffrey Pugliese, who subsequently tackled him with assistance from Sergeant MacLellan.

Tamerlan's younger brother Dzhokhar then drove the stolen SUV toward Tamerlan and the police, who unsuccessfully tried to drag Tamerlan out of the car's path and handcuff him; the car ran over Tamerlan and dragged him a short distance down the street, narrowly missing the Watertown officers. Watertown Sgt. MacLellan later stated that the younger brother had thought they were doing CPR on another officer and tried to run them over. Dzhokhar abandoned the car half a mile away and fled on foot. Badly wounded, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was taken into custody and died at 1:35 a.m. at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Police Officer Richard H. Donohue Jr. was critically wounded in the leg in crossfire from other officers shooting at the fleeing vehicle, but survived. Boston Police Department officer Dennis Simmonds was injured by a hand grenade and died on April 10, 2014. 15 other officers were also injured. A later report by Harvard Kennedy School's Program on Crisis Leadership concluded that lack of coordination among police agencies had put the public at excessive risk during the shootout.

Only one firearm was recovered at the scene, Tsarnaev's Ruger P95, which was found to have a defaced serial number.

Identification and search for suspects

Records on the Honda left at the scene identified the men as two brothers whose family had migrated to the United States seeking political asylum around 2002: 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev and 19-year-old Dzhokhar "Jahar" Tsarnaev. The FBI released additional photos of the two during the Watertown incident. Early on April 19, Watertown residents received automated calls asking them to stay indoors. That same morning Governor Patrick asked residents of Watertown and adjacent cities and towns to "shelter in place". Somerville residents also received automated calls instructing them to shelter in place.

A 20-block area of Watertown was cordoned off and residents were told not to leave their homes or answer the door, as officers scoured the area in tactical gear. Helicopters circled the area and SWAT teams in armored vehicles moved through in formation, with officers going door to door. On the scene were the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Diplomatic Security Service, HSI-ICE, the National Guard, the Boston, Cambridge, Watertown Police departments, and the Massachusetts State Police. The show of force was the first major field test of the interagency task forces created in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

The entire public transit network and most Boston taxi services were suspended, as was Amtrak service to and from Boston. Logan International Airport remained open under heightened security. Universities, schools, many businesses, and other facilities were closed as thousands of law enforcement personnel participated in the door-to-door manhunt in Watertown. Others followed up on other leads, including searching the house that the brothers shared in Cambridge, where seven improvised explosive devices were found.

The brothers' father spoke from his home in Makhachkala, Dagestan, encouraging Dzhokhar to: "Give up. You have a bright future ahead of you. Come home to Russia." He continued, "If they killed him, then all hell would break loose." On television, Dzhokhar's uncle from Montgomery Village, Maryland pleaded with him to turn himself in.

On the evening of April 19, two hours after the shelter-in-place order had been lifted, David Henneberry, a Watertown resident outside the search area, noticed that the tarp was loose on his parked boat. Investigating, he saw a body lying inside the boat in a pool of blood. He contacted the authorities, who surrounded the boat. A police helicopter verified movement through a thermal imaging device. The figure inside started poking at the tarp, prompting police to shoot at the boat.

According to Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis and Watertown Police Chief Deveau, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was shooting at police from inside the boat, "exchanging fire for an hour". A subsequent report indicated that the firing lasted for a shorter time. Despite this, Tsarnaev was found to have no weapon when he was captured.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested at 8:42 p.m. and taken to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he was listed in critical condition with gunshot wounds to the head, neck, legs, and hand. Initial reports that the neck wound represented a suicide attempt were contradicted by him being unarmed. The situation was chaotic, according to a police source quoted by The Washington Post, and the firing of weapons occurred during "the fog of war". A subsequent review by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts provided this more specific summary: "One officer fired his weapon without appropriate authority in response to perceived movement in the boat, and surrounding officers followed suit in a round of 'contagious fire', assuming they were being fired on by Tsarnaev. Weapons continued to be fired for several seconds until on scene supervisors ordered a ceasefire and regained control of the scene. The unauthorized shots created another dangerous crossfire situation".

These confusions were caused in part by a lack of clearly identified and coordinated law enforcement command of the thousands of officers from surrounding communities who self-deployed into the Watertown area during the events.

Legal proceedings

Interrogation

United States Senators Kelly Ayotte, Saxby Chambliss, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain, and Representative Peter T. King suggested that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a U.S. citizen, should be tried as an unlawful enemy combatant rather than as a criminal, potentially preventing him from obtaining legal counsel. Others said that doing so would be illegal, including prominent American legal scholar and lawyer Alan Dershowitz, and would jeopardize the prosecution. The government decided to try Dzhokhar in the federal criminal court system and not as an enemy combatant.

Dzhokhar was questioned for 16 hours by investigators but stopped communicating with them on the night of April 22 after Judge Marianne Bowler read him a Miranda warning. Dzhokhar had not previously been given a Miranda warning, as federal law enforcement officials invoked the warning's public safety exception. This raised doubts whether his statements during this investigation would be admissible as evidence and led to a debate surrounding Miranda rights.

Charges and detention

On April 22, 2013, formal criminal charges were brought against Tsarnaev in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts during a bedside hearing while he was hospitalized. He was charged with use of a weapon of mass destruction and with malicious destruction of property resulting in death. Some of the charges carry potential sentences of life imprisonment or the death penalty. Tsarnaev was judged to be awake, mentally competent, and lucid, and he responded to most questions by nodding. The judge asked him whether he was able to afford an attorney and he said no; he was represented by the Federal Public Defender's office. On April 26, Dzhohkar Tsarnaev was moved from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to the Federal Medical Center at Fort Devens, about 40 miles (64 km) from Boston. FMC Devens is a federal prison medical facility at a former Army base where he was held in solitary confinement at a segregated housing unit with 23-hour-per-day lockdown.

On July 10, 2013, Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty to 30 charges in his first public court appearance, including a murder charge for MIT police officer Sean Collier. He was back in court for a status hearing on September 23, and his lawyers requested more time to prepare their defense. On October 2, Tsarnaev's attorneys asked the court to lift the special administrative measures (SAMs) imposed by Attorney General Holder in August, saying that the measures had left Tsarnaev unduly isolated from communication with his family and lawyers, and that no evidence suggested that he posed a future threat.

Trial and sentencing

Jury selection began on January 5, 2015, and was completed on March 3, with a jury consisting of eight men and ten women (including six alternates). The trial began on March 4 with Assistant U.S. Attorney William Weinreb describing the bombing and painting Dzhokhar as "a soldier in a holy war against Americans" whose motive was "reaching paradise". He called the brothers equal participants.

Defense attorney Judy Clarke admitted that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had placed the second bomb and was present at the murder of Sean Collier, the carjacking of Dun Meng, and the Watertown shootout, but she emphasized the influence that his older brother had on him, portraying him as a follower. Between March 4 and 30, prosecutors called more than 90 witnesses, including bombing survivors who described losing limbs in the attack, and the government rested its case on March 30. The defense rested as well on March 31, after calling four witnesses.

Tsarnaev was found guilty on all 30 counts on April 8. The sentencing phase of the trial began on April 21, and a further verdict was reached on May 15 in which it was recommended that he be put to death. Tsarnaev was sentenced to death on June 24, after apologizing to the victims. In 2018 Tsarnaev's lawyers appealed on the grounds that a lower-court judge's refusal to move the case to another city not traumatized by the bombings deprived him of a fair trial.

On July 30, 2020, Tsarnaev's death sentence was reversed by the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which found that, during jury selection, the District Court did not properly screen prospective jurors on how much they had heard of the case. The First Circuit vacated the death sentence and three of the other thirty convictions against Tsarnaev, and ordered a new penalty phase jury trial with fresh jurors, leaving the decision of a new change of venue to the District Court. Tsarnaev's remaining convictions still carried multiple life sentences, ensuring that he would remain in prison regardless of the results of the new trial. The United States government appealed this ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which granted certiorari in the case United States v. Tsarnaev in March 2021, which was argued before the Court on October 13, 2021. On March 4, 2022, the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the First Circuit and reinstated Tsarnaev's death penalty.

Motives and backgrounds of the Tsarnaev brothers

Motives

According to FBI interrogators, Dzhokhar and his brother were motivated by Islamic beliefs but "were not connected to any known terrorist groups", instead learning to build explosive weapons from an online magazine published by al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen. They further alleged that "Dzhokhar and his brother considered suicide attacks and striking the Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular on the Fourth of July"; but ultimately decided to use remotely-activated pressure cooker bombs and other IEDs. Fox News reported that the brothers "chose the prestigious race as a 'target of opportunity' ... [after] the building of the bombs came together more quickly than expected".

Dzhokhar said that he and his brother wanted to defend Islam from the U.S., accusing the U.S. of conducting the Iraq War and War in Afghanistan against Muslims. A CBS report revealed that Dzhokhar had scrawled a note with a marker on the interior wall of the boat where he was hiding; the note stated that the bombings were "retribution for U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq", and called the Boston victims "collateral damage", "in the same way innocent victims have been collateral damage in U.S. wars around the world". Photographs of the note were later used in the trial.

Some political science and public policy writers suggest that Islam may have played a secondary role in the attacks. These writers theorize that the primary motives might have been sympathy towards the political aspirations in the Caucasus region and Tamerlan's inability to become fully integrated into American society. According to the Los Angeles Times, a law enforcement official said that Dzhokhar "did not seem as bothered about America's role in the Muslim world" as his brother Tamerlan had been. Dzhokhar identified Tamerlan as the "driving force" behind the bombing, and said that his brother had only recently recruited him to help.

Some journalists and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's defense attorney have suggested that the FBI may have recruited or attempted to recruit Tamerlan Tsarnaev as an informant.

Backgrounds

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was born in 1986 in the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, North Caucasus. Dzhokhar was born in 1993 in Kyrgyzstan, although some reports say that his family claims that he was born in Dagestan. The family spent time in Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan, and in Makhachkala, Dagestan. They are half Chechen through their father Anzor, and half Avar through their mother Zubeidat. They never lived in Chechnya, yet the brothers identified themselves as Chechen.

The Tsarnaev family immigrated to the United States in 2002 where they applied for political asylum, settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Tamerlan Tsarnaev attended Bunker Hill Community College but dropped out to become a boxer. His goal was to gain a place on the U.S. Olympic boxing team, saying that, "unless his native Chechnya becomes independent", he would "rather compete for the United States than for Russia". He married U.S. citizen Katherine Russell on July 15, 2010, in the Masjid Al Quran Mosque. While initially quoted in a student magazine as saying, "I don't have a single American friend. I don't understand them," a later FBI interview report documents Tamerlan stating it was a misquote, and that most of his friends were American. He had a history of violence, including an arrest in July 2009 for assaulting his girlfriend.

The brothers were Muslim; Tamerlan's aunt stated that he had recently become a devout Muslim. Tamerlan became more devout and religious after 2009, and a YouTube channel in his name was linked to Salafist and Islamist videos. The FBI was informed by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in 2011 that he was a "follower of radical Islam". In response, the FBI interviewed Tamerlan and his family and searched databases, but they did not find any evidence of "terrorism activity, domestic or foreign". During the 2012 trip to Dagestan, Tamerlan was reportedly a frequent visitor at a mosque on Kotrova Street in Makhachkala, believed by the FSB to be linked with radical Islam. Some believe that "they were motivated by their faith, apparently an anti-American, radical version of Islam" acquired in the U.S., while others believe that the turn happened in Dagestan.

At the time of the bombing, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth with a major in marine biology. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen on September 11, 2012. Tamerlan's boxing coach reported to NBC that the young brother was greatly affected by Tamerlan and admired him.

Tamerlan was previously connected to the triple homicide in Waltham, Massachusetts, on the evening of September 11, 2011, but he was not a suspect at the time. Brendan Mess, Erik Weissman, and Raphael Teken were murdered in Mess's apartment. All had their throats slit from ear to ear with such great force that they were nearly decapitated. The local district attorney said that it appeared that the killer and the victims knew each other, and that the murders were not random. Tamerlan Tsarnaev had previously described murder victim Brendan Mess as his "best friend". After the bombing and subsequent revelations of Tsarnaev's personal life, the Waltham murders case was reexamined in April 2013 with Tsarnaev as a new suspect. Both ABC and The New York Times have reported that there is strong evidence which implicates Tsarnaev in this triple homicide.

Some analysts claim that the Tsarnaevs' mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is a radical extremist and supporter of jihad who influenced her sons' behavior. This prompted the Russian government to warn the U.S. government on two occasions about the family's behavior. Both Tamerlan and his mother were placed on a terrorism watch list about 18 months before the bombing took place.