Boston Marathon Bombing Trial 2015: No Verdict Reached in 1st Day of Jury Deliberations

The first day of jury deliberations on the Boston Marathon bombing trial ended without a verdict reached on whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is guilty of the 2013 attack that killed three people and injured 264 others.

The 21-year-old ethnic Chechen faces 30 criminal charges after he and his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev set of a pair of homemade pressure-cooker bombs at the crowded finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is also charged with shooting a police officer to death three days after the bombing.

Once members of the jury find him guilty, they will hear a second round of evidence before determining whether to sentence him to death or to life in prison without possibility of parole.

The trail wrapped up on Monday with prosecutors contending that the accused wanted to sow terror in the U.S. The defense, on the other hand, portrayed him as just a follower of his brother Tamerlan.

The two opposing sides made their closing arguments before the jury. The prosecution is pursuing a death sentence against Tsarnaev while the defense wants life imprisonment without parole.

The prosecutors described Tsarnaev was an extremist. "The defendant thought that his values were more important than the people around him. He wanted to awake the mujahedeen, the holy warriors," Assistant U.S. Attorney Aloke Chakravarty said, according to a Reuters report. "He wanted to terrorize this country. He wanted to punish America for what it was doing to his people."

He said Tsarnaev had copies of al Qaeda's "Inspire" magazine on his computers. "These were political choices," he said of Tsarnaev. "He was making a statement, 'an eye for an eye.'"

But for the defense, Tsarnaev only followed his brother in carrying out the attack.

His attorney, Judith Clarke, who admitted that her client did all the charges leveled against him, said, "There is no excuse. No one is trying to make one. Planting bombs at the Boston Marathon one year and 51 weeks ago was a senseless act."

But Clarke said it was Tamerlan who planned the Boston Marathon bombing. "Tamerlan did that," she said. "We need to understand who was leading and who was following."

Tamerlan died early on April 19, 2013 after his brother ran him over with a car at the end of a gunfight with police.

The jury, Reuters reported, watched a video of Tsarnaev standing with a backpack in the crowd before the blasts that killed restaurant manager Krystle Campbell, 29; Chinese exchange student Lingzi Lu, 23; and eight-year-old Martin Richard.

He is also facing trial for the fatal shooting of Massachusetts of Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, 26.

During the trial, the prosecutors called 92 witnesses to make the case that Tsarnaev was an equal partner with his brother in plotting the bombings as vengeance for U.S. military campaigns in Muslim-majority countries. The defense called just four witnesses, including an F.B.I. photographer who also testified for the prosecution.

Representatives of the Roman Catholic Bishops of Massachusetts distributed flyers outside court on Tuesday reiterating the church's opposition to capital punishment.

"The defendant in this case has been neutralized and will never again cause harm," read the statement, signed by Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston and three bishops. "Society can do better than the death penalty."