The outcome of Wednesday's sentencing hearing is not in doubt: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will be formally condemned to die for his role in the Boston Marathon bombings. 
 
 But hours ahead of the hearing, which will feature up to 20 victims of the 2013 attack once again baring their anguish, one question remains unanswered: Will he break his silence? 
 
 Defense lawyers have not indicated whether Tsarnaev, 21, plans to accept the opportunity to address the court before the death sentence is officially imposed. 
 
 During the trial, the public only heard from Tsarnaev indirectly. 
 
 Sister Helen Prejean, a death penalty opponent, told the jury that she met with Tsarnaev five times and believed he was genuinely sorry for the carnage — three dead and more than 200 injured. 
 
 "No one deserves to suffer like they did," she quoted him as saying. 
 
 Prosecutors, on the other hand, played video they said suggested a lack of remorse; it showed him giving the middle finger to a security camera in a holding cell. 
 
 Video recorded in a jail cell in 2013 a few months after the bombing shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev flashing his middle finger to the camera. 
 
 Legal experts say there is little upside to Tsarnaev making a statement. 
 
 "I would be very surprised if he speaks," said Stephen Jones, who represented Timothy McVeigh, who was sentenced to death and later executed for the Oklahoma City bombing. 
 
 "Generally, I don't advise clients to make a statement unless they are articulate and it sounds like them and doesn't sound like it was written by lawyers." 
 
 McVeigh didn't take Jones' advice. When the judge asked if he had anything to say, he referenced a 1928 Supreme Court case over government wiretapping and privacy rights. 
 
 "If the court please, I wish to use the words of Justice Brandeis dissenting in Olmstead to speak for me," he said. "He wrote, 'Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.' That's all I have." 
 
 "Whatever would be said, I think, would be viewed as too little, too late." 
 
 Other convicted terrorists have used their time for diatribes. 
 
 "God curse America. And God save Osama bin Laden. You will never get him," Zacarias Moussaoui said when he was sentenced to life in prison in 2006 for conspiracy as part of the 9/11 attacks. 
 
 Abu Hamza, the London preacher sentenced to life earlier this year for training Al Qaeda terrorists, proclaimed his innocence and complained about the conditions he would face in prison. 
 
 "My concern is to make sure it is not a back door for crucifixion, not a back door for torture," said Hamza, who had one eye, hooks for hands, and diabetes. "Security issues should not be used to confiscate human rights issues." 
 
 Related: Bombing Survivors Call Death Verdict 'Justice' 
 
 David Hoose, a Massachusetts defense lawyer, told the Associated Press that Tsarnaev should keep his mouth shut. 
 
 “I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by it at this point. Whatever would be said, I think, would be viewed as too little, too late,” Hoose said. ||||| BOSTON (AP/CBS) — Will he finally speak? 
 
 Lawyers for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have said he feels remorse for the deadly attack, but the public has never heard directly from him. When he is formally sentenced Wednesday to death, he will be given an opportunity to address the court, but it’s not clear if he’ll take it. 
 
 Legal experts say Tsarnaev, 21, has little or nothing to gain by speaking since the judge is required to impose the death sentence recommended by the jury. Some wonder, though, whether he could decide to apologize or even make a political statement. 
 
 The 2013 twin bombings carried out by Tsarnaev and his late brother killed three people and injured more than 260, including 18 people who lost legs. The brothers also killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer days later. 
 
 In a message Tsarnaev scrawled inside a boat he hid in before he was captured, Tsarnaev said the attack was meant as retaliation against the U.S. for its actions in Muslim countries. During his trial, a Roman Catholic nun who visited Tsarnaev in prison said he expressed sympathy for the victims of the bombings. 
 
 “He said emphatically, ‘No one deserves to suffer like they did,'” said Sister Helen Prejean, a staunch death penalty opponent made famous in the 1995 film “Dead Man Walking.” 
 
 Tsarnaev’s lawyers told the jury those words show that Tsarnaev is sorry for what he did, but some experts said it is impossible to know what he meant, given his impassive demeanor throughout the trial. 
 
 “He’s somewhat of an enigma at this point. No one really knows what he will do,” said attorney David Hoose, who represented veterans hospital nurse Kristen Gilbert in her 2003 federal death penalty trial for killing four patients. Gilbert received a life sentence. 
 
 More than 20 bombing victims are expected to speak during Tsarnaev’s sentencing hearing, including family members of those who died and people who were injured in the explosions. 
 
 Bombing survivor Celeste Corcoran told WBZ that neither she nor her daughter Sydney, who was also injured, will be attending Tsarnaev’s Wednesday sentencing. 
 
 “It would only add stress to our lives and wouldn’t make any impact on him,” Celeste Corcoran said. “He is not worthy of our time or any more of our tears. To us, he is already dead.” 
 
 Hoose said he can’t see any legal advantage for Tsarnaev to speak. 
 
 “I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by it at this point. Whatever would be said, I think, would be viewed as too little, too late,” Hoose said. 
 
 New York Law School professor Robert Blecker, a death penalty advocate, said any expression of remorse would not affect Tsarnaev’s sentence or his planned appeal but could help him if he decides to seek a commutation of his death sentence from the president. 
 
 “If he desperately wanted to save his life and he were willing to express it now and then show a consistent pattern of remorse and good behavior, he would significantly strengthen his case later on,” Blecker said. 
 
 President Bill Clinton commuted the sentence of David Ronald Chandler, the first person sentenced to death under the 1988 federal law that allowed capital punishment in drug-related killings. A gunman who said Chandler — an Alabama marijuana dealer — paid him $500 to kill another man later recanted his testimony. Clinton commuted his sentence to life without parole. 
 
 Blecker said any speech by Tsarnaev would not jeopardize his appeal, which is likely to focus on an unsuccessful defense bid to move the trial because of the large number of people who knew someone connected to the marathon and the emotional impact the attack had in Massachusetts. 
 
 The defense made it clear from the first day of the trial that its goal was not to win an acquittal but to save Tsarnaev’s life. “It was him,” attorney Judy Clarke said in opening statements, admitting Tsarnaev participated in the bombings. 
 
 For Tsarnaev’s lawyers, the danger of him speaking is that it could backfire if he makes a political statement seeking to justify the bombings. 
 
 “There’s no legal advantage to doing it, and I’m sure he’ll be advised not to,” said Robert Sheketoff, a Boston attorney who represented Gary Lee Sampson, who was sentenced to death after carjacking and killing two Massachusetts men and killing a third man in New Hampshire in 2001. Sampson’s death sentence was later overturned; he faces a new sentencing trial in September. 
 
 Only three people have been executed under the federal death penalty since it was reinstated in 1988, including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. 
 
 In a brief statement during his sentencing hearing, McVeigh didn’t express remorse but instead quoted a dissenting opinion written by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in a wiretapping case: “Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.” 
 
 “That’s all I have,” McVeigh said. 
 
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– A nun says Dzhokhar Tsarnaev expressed remorse, while prosecutors played video of him giving the finger to a security camera. But today, secondhand narratives and hand gestures may give way to words straight out of the Boston Marathon bomber's mouth during his sentencing, NBC News reports. Although defense lawyers are mum, the will-he-or-won't-he question has set off a debate over whether it's a smart idea for him to vocalize, say, his motives or apologies to victims' families, as the Los Angeles Times suggests. The lawyer who defended Timothy McVeigh, for one, thinks Tsarnaev shouldn't talk. "I would be very surprised if he speaks," he tells NBC. "Generally, I don't advise clients to make a statement unless they are articulate and it ... doesn't sound like it was written by lawyers." Adds another defense attorney, "I don't think there's anything to be gained by it at this point," he says. "Whatever would be said … would be viewed as too little, too late." But a law school prof tells CBS that Tsarnaev could take a long view: While an apology won't affect his sentence, it could give him leverage if he seeks to have his death sentence commuted by the president. Conversely, he could use his sentencing as a platform, like Zacarias Moussaoui, who issued taunts at his 2006 sentencing for conspiring on the 9/11 attacks: "God curse America. And God save Osama bin Laden. You will never get him." Who will likely be speaking today: bombing victims and their families, who will have the chance to give impact statements, the Times notes. (Tsarnaev didn't testify at his trial, but he did cry during one person's testimony.)