“Right now, it feels like we can take a breath and breathe again,” she said.
Tsarnaev will become the 62nd federal inmate on death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. But it has been more than a decade since the federal government executed an inmate, and the Obama administration is reviewing its protocol for carrying out the death penalty after a botched Oklahoma state execution last year.
But the Justice Department, under Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., decided last year to seek the death penalty in Tsarnaev’s case. After Friday’s verdict was read, Holder’s successor, Loretta E. Lynch, issued a statement calling the sentence “the ultimate penalty” and “a fitting punishment for this horrific crime.”