Boston Marathon bomber sentenced to the death penalty

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was condemned on Friday to death on some, but not all of 17 counts that could have sent him to death row, by a federal jury for his role in the Boston Marathon bombings.

Tsarnaev, 21, was convicted last month of all 30 counts brought against him, including conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction that led to the deaths of Krystle Campbell, Lingzi Lu, eight-year-old Martin Richard and MIT police officer Sean Collier.

The attacks also left 17 people as amputees and resulted in more than 260 injuries. Seventeen of those counts drew the possibility of the death penalty.

The sentencing phase began on April 21, the day after the 2015 Boston Marathon. The jury, which consisted of seven women and five men, deliberated for 14 hours before reaching a decision, according to the Boston Herald.

The defence argued throughout the trial that Tsarnaev's older brother, Tamerlan, orchestrated the bombings and that Dzhokhar was brainwashed by his sibling.

However, the prosecution chronicled Dzhokhar's active role in the killing of Officer Collier, the theft of an escape car, the shootout with police that killed Tamerlan and Dzhokhar's capture in a boat, where he wrote 'stop killing our innocent people and we will stop'.

The 2013 bombings occurred near the marathon's finish line, where surveillance video showed the Tsarnaev brothers carrying backpacks. Inside those backpacks were bombs built from pressure cookers, according to the prosecution.