Attorneys for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev appealed his conviction and death sentence on Monday, arguing that publicity made it impossible for him to get a fair trial in the city and that capital punishment is unconstitutional. 
 
 In court papers, defense lawyer William Fick cited a recent dissent by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer in which he said that he believes the death penalty "now likely constitutes a legally prohibited 'cruel and unusual punishment.'" 
 
 However, the majority opinion in that very same case opened with the declaration that "capital punishment is constitutional." 
 
 Tsarnaev was sentenced to death in June for helping his older brother carry out the April 15, 2013, blasts that killed three people and injured and maimed more than 200 others. 
 
 The appeal claims that "continuous and unrelenting publicity" about the bombings, the defendant and his family, and wrenching survivor stories prevented him from getting an impartial hearing. It notes that Boston announced a new holiday marking the bombings while jurors were deliberating Tsarnaev's guilt. 
 
 As users of social media, the jurors would have found it impossible to avoid coverage, the appeal argues. 
 
 "Put simply, prejudicial media coverage, events, and environment saturated greater Boston, including the social networks of actual trial jurors, and made it an improper venue for the trial of this case," the court papers say. 
 
 The defense repeatedly asked for a change of venue before the trial began, but the requests were rejected by the judge. ||||| Testimony probably will not begin at Moakley federal courthouse until February, and a verdict may take until late spring or early summer. 
 
 Nearly two years after the Boston Marathon tragedy, the trial of one of the accused bombers is set to open — the final chapter of a saga that will forever be ingrained in the city’s history. 
 
 Starting Monday, the judge, prosecutors, and defense lawyers will start whittling down a list of more than 1,200 names, aiming to find 12 jurors and six alternates capable of deciding whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 21, is guilty, and if so, whether he should be put to death. 
 
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 The trial, which is attracting international attention, is expected to move especially slowly and with more than the usual care because a life is at stake; testimony probably will not begin until February, and a verdict may take until late spring or early summer. 
 
 “This is not just any other big trial,” said David Hoose, a Northampton lawyer who is one of the few in New England to have tried a death penalty case. “A death trial is different . . . death is different.” He added: “Every phase of it is subjected to greater scrutiny, which is appropriate given the potential outcome.” 
 
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 For the jury to determine Tsarnaev’s sentence, the panel must be unanimous in its decision. If it is not, the judge would be required to step in and sentence him to life in prison. No declaration of mistrial would be allowed, lawyers who specialize in the death penalty said. 
 
 The potential jurors summoned by US District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. over the next three days will start by filling out surveys to help determine whether they are qualified to serve on a death penalty jury. They will be intensely screened for impartiality, and the ability — and willingness — to sentence Tsarnaev to death, if the verdict warrants it. 
 
 A Boston Globe poll in July found that 62 percent of respondents supported US Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to seek the death penalty for Tsarnaev, while only 29 percent opposed the decision. 
 
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 The judge will also have to find jurors who, while willing to hand out the death penalty, also feel capable of opposing it if they find the crimes do not warrant death. 
 
 The Massachusetts courts last struck down the state’s death penalty in the early 1980s, and the last execution to take place in the state was in 1947. But Tsarnaev has been charged in the federal court system, which allows for capital punishment for about 50 crimes, including the detonation of weapons of mass destruction resulting in death, one of the crimes Tsarnaev faces. 
 
 Tsarnaev faces 30 charges — 17 of which carry the possibility of the death penalty — in the bombings at the Marathon finish line the afternoon of April 15, 2013, that killed three people and injured more than 260 others. Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan also allegedly shot and killed an MIT police officer in Cambridge days after the bombings, a crime for which Tsarnaev is also charged. 
 
 Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Tsarnaev in part based on the vulnerability of his targets, and his “heinous, cruel, and depraved manner of committing the offense,” according to court filings. 
 
 Tsarnaev’s defense team has argued that it has not had enough time to prepare for the trial, and that finding impartial jurors in the same city where the bombs went off will remain impossible — an argument that has been echoed by legal analysts. 
 
 But O’Toole has ruled that the defense team has failed to show that he cannot impanel a fair jury in Boston, and he has said the defense team has had enough time to prepare. A federal appeals court in Boston on Saturday refused a last-minute defense request to intervene. 
 
 Since his arrest, Tsarnaev has been held at the federal prison at Fort Devens in Ayer, under special conditions that restrict his communications. Five lawyers are assigned to his case. The prosecution team also includes five lawyers, with assistance from the federal Department of Justice. 
 
 The jury selection process could take at least a month. O’Toole and the lawyers from both sides will begin by reviewing the jurors’ initial surveys to determine which of them should immediately be excluded: for example, if they have a personal connection to the case, or a hardship that would prevent them from serving, such as a young child or ill relative who needs care. 
 
 The judge and the lawyers will then meet in person with the remaining potential jurors to determine whether they have any disqualifying qualities and confirm that they would be able to fairly consider a death sentence if it is warranted, legal analysts said. 
 
 “You’re talking about a group of human beings sitting down, making a calculated decision to take another person’s life,” Hoose said. 
 
 JANE FLAVELL COLLINS/AP/File Dzhokhar Tsarnaev depicted during a Dec. 18 court hearing. 
 
 A federal jury in Massachusetts has decided on life or death only twice: In 2001, a jury in Springfield convicted veterans’ nurse Kristen Gilbert of killing patients but spared her the death penalty. In 2003, admitted serial killer Gary Lee Sampson, a transient, pleaded guilty to the carjacking deaths of two people in Massachusetts, and a jury sentenced him to the death penalty. 
 
 Sampson appealed, and the jury’s verdict was vacated in 2011 after a judge determined that one of the jurors had lied during the screening process. An appeals court upheld the decision. 
 
 Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington-based research organization, said the decision to overturn Sampson’s death sentence nearly a decade later shows the import attached to death penalty cases, a factor that will affect Tsarnaev’s trial. 
 
 “If it wasn’t for the death penalty, there wouldn’t be much of a trial at all,” Dieter said of Tsarnaev’s case. “There’s the expectation that it will be done right; there are the resources for it to be done right. You can’t leave any stone unturned.” 
 
 Prosecutors plan to argue that Tsarnaev was clearly intent on a terrorist attack at the Marathon, with overwhelming evidence — including video of him with the backpack that they say contained the bomb. Prosecutors have named more than 700 potential witnesses and have documented hundreds of pieces of evidence. 
 
 The trial will be split into two phases. If jurors find Tsarnaev guilty of the bombings, they would have to determine his fate in a second, full-fledged trial, with evidence and witness statements. 
 
 In that trial, however, the rules of evidence are far more relaxed, giving prosecutors and defense more leeway in painting a picture of Tsarnaev. 
 
 Prosecutors will want to show that he was a determined, indiscriminate killer. Defense lawyers will seek to portray Tsarnaev as an impressionable teenager who was influenced by a dominant older brother who had grown extreme in his Muslim views, according to court records. 
 
 “They will seek to tell the story of how he got to be where he was in a way that makes it human, and, although not excusable, in some measure understandable,” said Max Stern, a lawyer with the Boston firm Todd & Weld. 
 
 In Tsarnaev’s case, Stern said, defense lawyers “will try to get the jury to see him as a young man — as a youth who was molded by his experiences as opposed to somebody who they will see as a predator.” ||||| BOSTON (AP) — A jury sentenced Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death Friday for the Boston Marathon bombing, sweeping aside pleas that he was just a "kid" who fell under the influence of his fanatical older brother. 
 
 Members of the legal defense team for convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, from the left, Timothy Watkins, William Fick, David Bruck, Judy Clarke, and Miriam Conrad arrive at federal court... (Associated Press) 
 
 Federal prosecutor William Weinreb arrives at federal court in Boston, Thursday, May 14, 2015. Jurors continue deliberations Thursday to determine the fate of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev:... (Associated Press) 
 
 Winston Warfield, of Boston, second from left, holds a placard while standing with other protesters outside federal court as they demonstrate against the death penalty, Thursday, May 14, 2015, in Boston.... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - This undated photo released by the FBI on April 19, 2013 shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. On Friday, May 15, 2015, Tsarnaev was sentenced to death by lethal injection for the 2013 Boston Marathon terror... (Associated Press) 
 
 Tsarnaev, 21, stood with his hands folded upon learning his fate, decided after 14 hours of deliberations over three days in the nation's most closely watched terrorism trial since the Oklahoma City bombing case two decades ago. 
 
 The decision sets the stage for what could be the nation's first execution of a terrorist in the post-9/11 era, though the case is likely to go through years of appeals. The execution would be carried out by lethal injection. 
 
 The 12-member jury had to be unanimous for Tsarnaev to get the death penalty. Otherwise, he would have automatically received a sentence of life in prison without parole. 
 
 Three people were killed and more than 260 wounded when two pressure-cooker bombs packed with shrapnel exploded near the finish line on April 15, 2013. 
 
 Tsarnaev was convicted last month of all 30 federal charges against him, including use of a weapon of mass destruction and the killing of an MIT police officer during the Tsarnaev brothers' getaway attempt. Seventeen of those charges carried the possibility of the death penalty. 
 
 Tsarnaev's chief lawyer, death penalty specialist Judy Clarke, admitted at the very start of the trial that he participated in the bombings, bluntly telling the jury: "It was him." 
 
 But the defense argued that Dzhokhar was an impressionable 19-year-old who was led astray by his volatile and domineering 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, who wanted to punish the U.S. for its wars in Muslim countries. 
 
 Prosecutors portrayed Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as an equal partner in the attack, saying he was so heartless he planted a bomb on the pavement behind a group of children, killing an 8-year-old boy. 
 
 To drive home their point, prosecutors cited the message he scrawled in the dry-docked boat where he was captured: "Stop killing our innocent people and we will stop." And they opened their case in the penalty phase with a startling photo of him giving the finger to a security camera in his jail cell months after his arrest. 
 
 "This is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev —unconcerned, unrepentant and unchanged," prosecutor Nadine Pellegrin said. 
 
 The jurors also heard grisly and heartbreaking testimony from numerous bombing survivors who described seeing their legs blown off or watching someone next to them die. 
 
 Killed in the bombing were Lingzi Lu, a 23-year-old Boston University graduate student from China; Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager from Medford; and 8-year-old Martin Richard, who had gone to watch the marathon with his family. Massachusetts Institute of Technology police Officer Sean Collier was shot to death in his cruiser days later. Seventeen people lost legs in the bombings. 
 
 Tamerlan Tsarnaev died days after the bombing when he was shot by police and run over by Dzhokhar during a chaotic getaway attempt. 
 
 Tsarnaev did not take the stand, and he slouched in his seat through most of his trial, a seemingly bored look on his face. In his only flash of emotion during the months-long case, he cried when his Russian aunt took the stand. 
 
 The only evidence of any remorse on his part in the two years since the attack came from the defense's final witness, Sister Helen Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun and staunch death penalty opponent made famous by the movie "Dead Man Walking." 
 
 She quoted Tsarnaev as saying of the bombing victims: "No one deserves to suffer like they did." 
 
 Tsarnaev's lawyers also called teachers, friends and Russian relatives who described him as a sweet and kind boy who cried during "The Lion King." The defense called him a "good kid." 
 
 The defense argued that sparing his life and instead sending him to the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, would be a harsh punishment and would best allow the bombing victims to move on with their lives without having to read about years of death penalty appeals. 
 
 U.S. District Judge George O'Toole Jr. will formally impose the sentence at a later date during a hearing in which bombing victims will be allowed to speak. Tsarnaev will also be given the opportunity to address the court. 
 
 In deciding on the penalty, the jury had to weigh so-called aggravating factors — including the cruelty of the crime, the killing of a child, and the amount of carnage inflicted, any lack of remorse — against mitigating factors, which could include his age, the possible influence of his brother and his turbulent, dysfunctional family. 
 
 The Tsarnaevs —ethnic Chechens — lived in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan and the volatile Dagestan region of Russia, near Chechnya, before moving to the U.S. about a decade before the bombings. They settled in Cambridge, just outside Boston.
– Not a huge surprise: Lawyers for Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev today appealed his death-penalty conviction, arguing that "continuous and unrelenting publicity" biased jurors and made a fair trial in Boston impossible, NBC News reports. "Put simply, prejudicial media coverage, events, and environment saturated greater Boston, including the social networks of actual trial jurors, and made it an improper venue for the trial of this case," say the papers. The lawyers want another trial at a new location, the AP reports. Earlier this year, the Guardian reminded us that Tsarnaev's appeals will likely delay his punishment for "at least a decade." The April 15, 2013, bomb strike in Boston left three dead and more than 200 maimed or injured.