Tsarnaev's lawyer: brother, not Dzhokhar, killed Sean Collier
The defense attorney for alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev said Wednesday that it was his brother Tamerlan, and not Tsarnaev himself, who killed MIT Police Officer Sean Collier on April 18, 2013.
In her opening statement in federal court, defense attorney Judy Clarke tried to magnify Tamerlan’s role in the bombings and the subsequent “path of devastation.”
Lead prosecutor William Weinreb argued that Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan were partners in the murder and acted together as they shot him 6 times: twice in the side of the head, once between the eyes, and three times in his right hand.
Weinreb also revealed some of the types of evidence that will be presented in the trial. He said that blood from Collier was found on two white gloves in Tsarnaev’s Honda Civic and that an MIT graduate student riding a bicycle during the attack saw Tsarnaev look directly at him.
Clarke painted a different picture. “Tamerlan shot and killed Officer Collier,” she said definitively.
According to Clarke, when Tamerlan went on to carjack a young man in a Mercedes, he held up a gun and told him, “I just killed a police officer.”
Collier’s father was present in the courtroom Wednesday, along with other victims’ family members. In addition to Collier’s death, Tsarnaev is charged with the deaths of three others: Martin Richard, 8, Lu Lingzi, 23, and Krystle Campbell, 29.