“I Am Sorry For The Lives That I Have Taken”

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the convicted Boston bomber, spoke in public Wednesday, for the first time since he and his brother Tamerlan — who was killed by police days after the bombing — committed their attack on the Boston Marathon in 2013. Tsarnaev addressed the court at his official sentencing, after several injured victims and the families of the four people killed in the attack and in its aftermath talked about their losses and their pain. "You told us just how unbearable it was, this thing I put you through. Now I am sorry for the lives that I have taken," he said, as reported by NBC News. Tsarnaev was convicted of killing three people and injuring dozens more with pressure-cooker bombs he and his brother built, and of killing an MIT police officer while they were on the run. Following Tsarnaev's conviction on April 8 of 30 counts related to the bombing, a jury voted to give him the death penalty on May 15. During the trial, his lawyer readily admitted that her client had carried out the attack, but she argued that the had been influenced by his older, more radical brother. At least some of the people affected by the bombing did not want Tsarnaev to be sentenced to death. The parents of 8-year-old Martin Richard asked that Tsarnaev receive life in prison rather than the death penalty in an op-ed in the Boston Globe. "We know that the government has its reasons for seeking the death penalty," they wrote, "but the continued pursuit of that punishment could bring years of appeals and prolong reliving the most painful day of our lives."