Moments before a judge sentenced him to death, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev rose to his feet Wednesday and apologized to the victims and their loved ones for the first time. "I pray for your relief, for your healing," he said.Apologizing to the dead does them no good.
"I am sorry for the lives that I've taken, for the suffering that I've caused you, for the damage that I've done - irreparable damage," the 21-year-old college student said haltingly in his Russian accent, breaking more than two years of silence.
"I'm sorry I got caught."
After Tsarnaev said his piece, U.S. District Judge George O'Toole Jr. quoted Shakespeare's line "The evil that men do lives after them. The good is often interred with their bones."
"So it will be for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev," the judge said, telling Tsarnaev that no one will remember that his teachers were fond of him, that his friends found him fun to be with or that he showed compassion to disabled people. What will be remembered is that you murdered and maimed innocent people, and that you did it willfully and intentionally.
"You did it on purpose," O'Toole said in ordering that Tsarnaev be executed.