Jahar was a lost teenager, raised all his life to take direction from the most powerful adult in his life, Tamerlan.

Tamerlan was the impulse behind the Boston Marathon bombings; the fanatical emotions and ideology behind it. "If Tamerlan hadn't been in the picture, would Jahar have done this on his own?"

"There's no point in trying to hurt him as he hurt, because it can't be done. All you can do...is make the best choice." "We are asking you to punish Jahar by imprisoning him for the rest of his life."

"One punishment is over quickly...the other will last for years and decades while he is locked away."

Bruck shows jurors a photo of the Supermax facility in Florence, CO, telling them this is where #Tsarnaev will go for a life term. He also shows a photo from wintertime; it's a desolate, barren, frozen white landscape, like a movie set.

If Tsarnaev goes here, he will be "safely and securely" locked away. He'll go here and be forgotten; no more spotlight.

When Tsarnaev goes to this prison, "there will be no nothing", no jailhouse interview, no autobiography; he'll be cut off forever.

You must also consider the culture into which Tsarnaev was born, and his particular family.
We will bring in an expert professor from Princeton who will explain who the Chechen people are, their culture, etc. ... Stalin's mass-deportation of the Chechen people, which affected Tsarnaev's parents.

Dzhokhar grew up in a unrealistic atmosphere, full of unrealistic expectation and isappointment.

As Tsarnaev goes to college, both his parents return to Russia under duress and he's left with Tamerlan as his only guide.

Dzhokhar was "loved by his teachers and appreciated by his friends. He did well in school."

You can't find anyone to say such nice things about Tamerlan; everyone liked Dzhokhar. "He was a good kid."

His father and mother had a complicated relationship; his family rejected her. This caused a lot of heartache...His parents lived "a nomadic life" with unrealistic hopes and a lifetime of failures, their 4 small ch