Tsarnaev Juror Speaks Publicly About Death Penalty Decision

By FRANK O’LAUGHLIN (Patch Staff)

A 23-year-old who served on the jury in the trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev says he would not have voted in favor of the death penalty if he had known some of the victims and families wanted a life sentence.

That’s according to comments made by Kevin Fagan during an appearance on WBUR radio Monday. In the interview, Fagan became the first juror to agree to speak publicly using his name.

Fagan said he would have changed his vote in the penalty phase of the trial had he known the parents of eight-year-old bombing victim Martin Richard wanted to see Tsarnaev be sentenced to life in prison rather then death by lethal injection.

Because the judge presiding over the trial ordered all jurors to refrain from following media coverage of the proceedings, Fagan had not a clue.

“If I had known that, I probably - I probably would change my vote. But then again, if I knew that, I wouldn’t be on the jury either,” Fagan told WBUR.

Fagan went on to state that he believed the defense when they claimed Tsarnaev was influenced by his older brother Tamerlan, but he still knew Dzhokhar’s actions were deserving of great punishment.

“He still chose to leave that bomb there for about 4½ minutes,” Fagan said. “So it’s hard to get away from that and the damage and strife that it caused.”

Fagan said he is still trying to decompress from everything he saw and heard during the course of the trial. The experience is one that he’ll never be able to forget.

“Well, some of the things I know I’m not going to forget. But to try and take away very emotionally jarring testimony and images and try to view it objectively and put it in some sort of perspective for myself is definitely part of that decompression,” Fagan said.

Three people were killed in the bombing and 260 others were injured back in April of 2013.