BOSTON — Lying grievously wounded in a hospital bed, the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings admitted on Sunday to playing a role in the attacks, said law enforcement officials, and on Monday he was charged with using a weapon of mass destruction that resulted in three deaths and more than 170 injuries. 
 
 Uttering the word “no” once, but mostly nodding his responses, the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was charged in a brief but dramatic bedside scene in the intensive care ward of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he is recovering from multiple gunshot wounds sustained during his capture last week. 
 
 Mr. Tsarnaev made his admission on Sunday morning to specially trained F.B.I. agents who had been waiting outside his hospital room for him to regain consciousness. After he woke up, they questioned him, invoking what is known as the public safety exception to the Miranda Rule, a procedure authorized by a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court decision which in certain circumstances allows interrogation after an arrest without notifying a prisoner of the right to remain silent. 
 
 In the course of questioning him about whether he knew of any other active plots or threats to public safety, he admitted that he had been involved in laying the bombs that killed three people at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. 
 
 He said that he knew of no other plots and that he and his brother had acted alone, and he said he knew of no more bombs that had not been detonated. 
 
 At the legal hearing Monday, he shook his head in response to most questions. The brief bedside session began when Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler asked a doctor whether Mr. Tsarnaev was alert, according to a transcript of the proceeding. 
 
 “You can rouse him,” the judge told the doctor. 
 
 “How are you feeling?” asked the doctor, identified in the transcript as Dr. Odom. “Are you able to answer some questions?” He nodded. 
 
 Judge Bowler then read Mr. Tsarnaev his rights. Also present were two United States attorneys and three federal public defenders, who will be representing him. Judge Bowler asked if he understood his right to remain silent, to which he nodded affirmatively, according to the transcript. 
 
 The only word Mr. Tsarnaev uttered, apparently, was “No,” after he was asked if he could afford a lawyer. 
 
 Judge Bowler said, “Let the record reflect that I believe the defendant has said, ‘No.’ ” 
 
 At the end of the session, Judge Bowler said: “At this time, at the conclusion of the initial appearance, I find that the defendant is alert, mentally competent, and lucid. He is aware of the nature of the proceedings.” If convicted, he faces the death penalty or life behind bars. 
 
 Mr. Tsarnaev is being treated for what court papers described as possible gunshot wounds to the “head, neck, legs and hand.” One law enforcement officer said the wound to the neck appeared to be the result of a self-inflicted gunshot. The charges were lodged in a criminal complaint unsealed Monday in United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the first step in a lengthy process. 
 
 The White House said that Mr. Tsarnaev would not be placed in military detention. “We will prosecute this terrorist through our civilian system of justice,” said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary. 
 
 He noted that it was illegal to try an American citizen in a military commission, and that a number of high-profile terrorism cases had been handled in the civilian court system, including that of the would-be bomber who tried to bring down a passenger jet around Christmas 2009 with explosives in his underwear. 
 
 The charges against Mr. Tsarnaev were made public about the same time that Boston, like many cities across the country, held a moment of silence at 2:50 p.m., the time of the explosions a week before. Hundreds of people gathered in Copley Square, near the scene of the attacks, after which church bells tolled mournfully in a cold, wintry wind. 
 
 Already, hundreds of mourners had attended a funeral at St. Joseph Church in Medford, Mass., for Krystle Campbell, the 29-year-old restaurant manager killed near the finish line of the marathon. In the evening, hundreds more attended a memorial service at Boston University for Lu Lingzi, 23, a Chinese graduate student who was killed in the bombings. 
 
 A service is planned Wednesday for Sean Collier, 27, the M.I.T. campus police officer who was killed in his car Thursday night. 
 
 Katharine Q. Seelye reported from Boston, Michael S. Schmidt from Washington and William K. Rashbaum from New York. Reporting was contributed by Michael Cooper and John Eligon from New York; Richard A. Oppel Jr., Serge F. Kovaleski and Jess Bidgood from Boston; and Peter Baker from Washington. ||||| NBC's Michael Isikoff reports on what a source, inside the hospital room with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is telling him about Tsarnaev's interaction with investigators. NBC analyst Roger Cressey also joins to discuss what authorities are now saying about the Tsarnaev brothers' possible plans for an attack on New York City. 
 
 A badly wounded but awake Dzhokhar Tsarnaev showed little signs of fear or remorse during his hospital room court hearing earlier this week and his heart monitor didn’t register a blip when he was told he was facing the death penalty in the Boston Marathon bombing case, according to a source familiar with the events inside the hospital room when he was read his rights. 
 
 Tsarnaev’s face was splotched and swollen, his left hand was bandaged, and he was unable to talk during the brief court hearing presided over by U.S. Judge Marianne Bowler on Monday afternoon. 
 
 The surviving bombing suspect mouthed rather than said the word “no” when asked if he could afford a lawyer and nodded in the affirmative when asked if he understood his rights. 
 
 But Tsarnaev appeared to fully follow the proceeding, the source said. The most telling moment, the source said, came early on when, after Tsarnaev was informed of the two charges against him, the judge asked prosecutor William Weinreb to spell out the possible penalties he was facing. 
 
 “Your honor, the maximum penalty is death,” Weinreb said, according to a public transcript of the proceeding. 
 
 Tsarnaev showed no reaction — nor did his heart monitor register any change, the source said. “There was no blip at all,” said the source. 
 
 But heart monitors don’t always register emotional responses — and there is no way to tell what impact medications Tsarmaev may have been given had, according to medical experts. 
 
 There have also been conflicting reports about Tsarnaev’s mental state in the days after his capture. “Over the weekend, he’s in and out of lucidity,” Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell” show on Thursday. “He’s got — he’s on medication, he’s talking, but he’s not talking, he’s unconscious, he’s going for medical procedures.” 
 
 But those present at the bedside court hearing were convinced that Tsarnaev was fully cognizant of the circumstances he was facing, the source said. Judge Bowler agreed. “I find the defendant is alert, mentally competent and lucid,” she said, according to the transcript. “He is aware of the nature of the proceedings.” 
 
 Handout / FBI via Reuters Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, has been charged in the Boston Marathon bombing. 
 
 The court proceeding erupted as a source of controversy Thursday when Rogers charged that Judge Bowler had interfered with FBI questioning of Tsarnaev – and that the Justice Department failed to object — when she ordered that Tsarnaev be read his rights on Monday, a day after he was charged in a then-sealed complaint at 6:47 p.m. Sunday. 
 
 FBI agents were questioning Tsarnaev — and getting his responses in writing — under a “public safety exception” that allows agents to obtain information from criminal suspects for 48 hours without reading them their constitutional rights informing them they have the right to remain silent and a right to a lawyer. The information that agents got — including the disclosure Thursday that Tsarnaev and his brother had talked about driving to Times Square to set off more bombs — came during those sessions over the weekend. 
 
 But Rogers said Thursday that FBI agents “weren’t quite finished with him” when Bowler directed that the court hearing take place that Monday. “To have the court affirmatively push their way in, is — A) I think it's wrong, and B) we should have given the FBI the time that they needed.” Justice Department officials “have a lot of explaining to do.” 
 
 Bowler, asked by NBC News about Rogers’ charges in her federal courtroom in Boston Thursday, replied: “The court does not comment.” 
 
 A federal law enforcement official disputed Rogers’ account, telling NBC News that FBI agents had already left the hospital room and wrapped up their questioning before the court hearing took place mid-day Monday. In a statement emailed to reporters Thursday, Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said that, after the criminal complaint was filed, the rules of criminal procedure required the judge to advice the defendant of his rights. 
 
 “The prosecutors and FBI agents in Boston were advised of the scheduled initial appearance in advance of its occurrence,” he said. 
 
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– Dzhokhar Tsarnaev may have been badly wounded, with his face swollen, hand bandaged, and throat too injured to talk, but the young bomber apparently showed no signs of fear or regret during his hospital room court hearing Monday, reports NBC News. And when told the maximum penalty he was facing was death, Tsarnaev had no reaction: The heart monitor he was hooked up to registered "no blip at all," says a source. Experts, however, caution that emotional responses aren't always picked up by such monitors, and note that he may have been medicated at the time. Meanwhile, the judge who conducted that hearing, Marianne Bowler, has been harshly criticized ever since it was revealed she informed Tsarnaev of his Miranda rights during the Monday hearing; right after that he stopped talking to investigators. "We have a long-standing tradition that the judiciary does not interfere with investigations. This sets a very dangerous precedent," said House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers, who thinks the Justice Department should have intervened and forced a delay. Sources say Bowler told the DOJ on Saturday that she planned to read Tsarnaev his rights two days later, and a DOJ rep indicated that her actions were appropriate, reports the Wall Street Journal. "The rules of criminal procedure require the court to advise the defendant of his right to silence and his right to counsel during the initial appearance.''