"We have seen more pain and more horror and more grief in this courtroom than any of you would have thought possible," attorney David Bruck said as Tsarnaev's defense team began what could be a two-week campaign to avoid the death penalty.  "No punishment could ever be equal to the terrible effects of this crime on the survivors and the victims' families," he said. "There is no evening of the scales. There is no point of trying to hurt him as he hurt because it can't be done. All we can do, all you can do is make the best choice."  Bruck told jurors there are only two punishments for them to choose from: death, or life in prison without any possibility of parole.  "We are asking you to punish Jahar by imprisoning him for the rest of his life."  Showing the court a photo of the federal Supermax prison in Colorado, Bruck said:  "This is where the government keeps other terrorists who used to be famous but aren't anymore. ... He goes here and he's forgotten. No more spotlight, like the death penalty brings.  "No interviews with the news media, no autobiography, no messages from Jahar on the Internet. No nothing.  "No martyrdom. Just years and years of punishment, day after day, as he grows up to deal with the lonely struggle of dealing with what he did.  "The evidence will show that if you sentence Jahar to a lifetime of thinking about what he did, you'll both punish him and protect society."  Tsarnaev, 21, was convicted this month of all 30 counts against him; 17 of those counts carry the death penalty for the murders of four -- Krystle Campbell, 29; Lingzi Lu, 23; Martin Richard, 8; and Sean Collier, 26.  In deciding whether the former college student is executed for his crimes or spends the rest of his days in a high-security federal prison, jurors must weigh the heinousness of his crime and the toll on his victims against so-called mitigating factors, such as his relative youth, mental health and family background, and whether or not he is remorseful.  He has shown no emotion as he sits in court, and he has avoided eye contact with maimed bombing survivors and relatives of the dead.  Last week, federal prosecutors presented three days of gut-wrenching victim impact testimony, including an array of images showing the victims as happy, active people and edited videos that added a soundtrack featuring a loud explosion, screams and panicked voices to the horrific bombing scene outside the Forum restaurant, where Richard and Lu died.  Lead defense attorney Judy Clarke -- a nationally known death penalty opponent -- has acknowledged that Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, set off the bombs and shot MIT campus cop Collier. But she is expected to build a narrative showing her client as a puppet of his dominant older brother.  Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was 26, died in a gunbattle with Watertown, Massachusetts, police three days after the bombings.  Clarke's colleague, Bruck, began that narrative in his opening statement by noting, "The man who conceived, planned and led this crime is beyond our power to punish. Only the 19-year-old younger brother who helped is left.  "He was 19, nearly 20. But he was still at an age still legally too young to buy a beer. And an age when people make horribly bad, destructive decisions. What each of you will have to decide for yourself is how to weigh his young age as a mitigating factor."  Bruck referred to a photo prosecutors introduced last week -- showing Tsarnaev raising his middle finger at a surveillance camera in his federal courthouse cell -- to make his point.  "I could almost hear you gasp" when that photo was displayed between images of bombing victims, Bruck said. "It turned out that shocking gesture wasn't quite as advertised.  "What did he mean? It meant he was acting as an immature 19-year-old."  Bruck laid out the case the defense team plans to present, shifting the focus from stories of the victims to the story of the Tsarnaev family and factors attorneys say fueled such a horrific crime -- including Chechen history and culture, parents with mental health issues and an adolescent's search for identity.  "Jahar was a good kid. He was a follower, he didn't really stand up for anything," Bruck said. "In the months before the bombings, it was Tamerlan who became obsessed with jihad, spending hours on his computer."  During the guilt phase of the trial, jurors saw contents from Jahar's computer, which Bruck admitted "looked awful. ... It made it look like it started with Jahar."  Defense attorneys weren't able to show jurors Tamerlan's computer then, but they can during the penalty phase.  "What Tamerlan's computer shows is obsession. He had become obsessed with jihad. His computer leaves no doubt who drove this crime, the fanatical emotions and ideology that propelled this crime.  "No one is going to claim that Tamerlan forced Jahar to help him commit these terrible crimes. When Tamerlan decided it was time for these crimes, Jahar went with him. He was all in. But if not for Tamerlan, this would not have happened.  "Tamerlan had power over Jahar."  Among the first witnesses Monday was Tamerlan Tsarnaev's mother-in-law, Judith Russell. She described how her daughter, Katherine, pulled away from the family as her relationship with Tamerlan became more serious.  The family did not approve of Tamerlan because he had dropped out of school and did not have a job, she said.  "I didn't really want her to be with him. They didn't seem to be a good match," Russell told jurors. "The only thing driving him was boxing."  He arrived 90 minutes late for his first meeting with his future mother-in-law and did not make a good impression, she said.  At one point in the relationship, the couple broke up because Tamerlan cheated on Katherine, but they later reconciled.  Russell said her daughter began to study Islam, even though she had not been religious as a child, then began to cover her head.  "I wasn't concerned with her adopting Islam because there was nothing wrong with Islam. I was just worried about the whole package. He wasn't working. It just seemed like she was sacrificing a lot for the relationship."  During cross-examination, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Weinreb asked: "When Tamerlan and your daughter were at your house, they seemed like a normal couple, didn't they?"  "What's a normal couple?" Russell responded.  Several members of Tsarnaev's family arrived in Boston over the weekend, but the defense has been closely guarding its witness list. The relatives, who are at an undisclosed location after being forced to leave a suburban hotel, apparently do not include his parents, who divorced and returned to Dagestan before the April 15, 2013, bombings.  Court filings indicate that the defense plans to call expert witnesses to explain Tsarnaev's difficult upbringing as the overlooked child of immigrants -- displaced Russian Muslims whose American dream failed.  Under federal law, the jury's decision must be unanimous. A deadlocked jury would result in an automatic life sentence for Tsarnaev -- which means the defense only needs to convince one juror to spare his life.  The Boston Globe reported over the weekend that fewer than 20% of those polled in Massachusetts favor the death penalty for Tsarnaev. The number is down substantially since the days after the bombings.
Sending Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to prison for life would bring years of punishment and rob him of martyrdom, jurors were told Monday.