The jury hearing the Boston Marathon bombing have found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty of killing three people and injuring 264 in the April 15th, 2013 attack on the city's best-attended sporting event, as well as fatally shooting a police officer four days later.
Tsarnaev, (21), was tried on a sprawling 30-count indictment, with 17 of the charges carrying the death penalty.
He was found guilty of all 30 counts.
The jury that found him guilty will now decide whether to sentence him to death or life in prison without possibility of parole.
Jurors spent just over 11 hours evaluating Tsarnaev’s guilt in two days of deliberations, following 16 days of testimony.
Defence lawyers have admitted that Tsarnaev committed the crimes of which he stands accused but said he did so at the bidding of his older brother Tamerlan, 26, who died following a gunfight with police in Watertown, Massachusetts.
Prosecutors laid out evidence that the defendant, an ethnic Chechen who immigrated from Russia a decade before the attack, had read and listened to jihadist materials, and wrote a note in the boat where he was found hiding suggesting the bombing was an act of retribution for US military campaigns in Muslim-dominated countries.
A death sentence by the jury would require a unanimous jury.
In the months before the trial, defence attorney Judy Clarke made repeated efforts to move the case out of Boston, arguing Tsarnaev couldn’t get a fair trial because the region had been traumatised by the bombing and a subsequent manhunt through the area.
Prosecutors called more than 90 witnesses, including federal agents who testified that Tsarnaev was closely involved in the planning and execution of the attack. The government sought to undercut Ms Clarke’s effort to put the onus on the older brother, a defence effort geared more toward avoiding a death sentence than a guilty verdict.
Ms Clarke, who has negotiated life sentences for other notorious criminals including “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, didn’t put her client on the witness stand.