Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik on Wednesday praised as "justified" the 30 unanimous guilty verdicts returned against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the Boston Marathon bombings, the worst attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11.
"It sends a message to people who would commit acts like this that they're going to be held accountable for their actions," Kerik, who headed the city's police force from 2000 to 2001, told Newsmax. "The FBI, the investigators, and the federal prosecutors did a good job presenting the case."
As New York's top cop on 9/11 and, before that, head of the city's sprawling jails, Kerik knows the criminal justice system as well as anyone. His new book, published March 31, is titled
"From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey From Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054" (Threshold).
Tsarnaev, now 21, a Muslim immigrant of Chechen descent, was
convicted of all charges stemming from the attacks, caused when two homemade pressure-cooker bombs packed with shrapnel exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013.
Three people were killed and 264 were injured, including 17 who lost limbs. The federal court jury of seven women and five men deliberated nearly 12 hours after a trial in which prosecutors called 92 witnesses over 15 days of testimony. The defense called only four witnesses.
Standing pale and motionless, Tsarnaev folded his arms, fidgeted, and looked down at the defense table as the verdicts were being read.
The charges included conspiracy and deadly use of a weapon of mass destruction. Seventeen of the counts carry the death penalty. They included those stemming from the fatal shooting days later of MIT police officer Sean Collier.
Collier died as Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, tried to get his gun before they planned to head to New York City to plant bombs in Times Square.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed three days after the attacks in a violent shootout with police. A Boston public transit officer also was seriously wounded in a shooting involving the brothers.
In a real-life drama that gripped the nation, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested four days after the marathon bombings during a huge manhunt and a virtual lockdown of the Boston area that spread into suburban Watertown.
Police eventually found him hiding inside a motorboat stored in a residential backyard after the person who lived in the house spotted blood on the outside of the boat and tipped authorities. Tsarnaev, who was 19 at the time, had been shot during the spree.
He was
surrounded by police for more than an hour before he was arrested without incident.
"It's not a happy occasion, but it's something," Karen Brassard, who suffered wounds on her legs during the bombings, said Wednesday at a news conference after the convictions. "One more step behind us."
Tsarnaev's attorneys left the federal courthouse without commenting.
In the trial's next phase, which could begin as early as Monday, the jury will hear evidence on whether Tsarnaev should get the death penalty or spend the rest of his life in prison.
Kerik told Newsmax that he was not concerned about whether Tsarnaev would receive the death penalty, because he was prosecuted under federal statutes. Massachusetts banned its state death penalty in 1984.
The former police commissioner, however, dismissed ideas that Tsarnaev could be martyred if he dies for the bombings — considered the highest honor under Islamic jihadism.
"If that was his intent and what he wants, the people of the United States may just give it to him," Kerik said.
"In this case, the evidence is overwhelming. By his own admittance, in many of the circumstances here, he admitted his own guilt.
"The evidence is just overwhelming," he said. "The people of the United States are going to hold him accountable."
Kerik is the author of the memoir
"From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey From Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054."
More broadly, the Tsarnaev case proves "how young people like this can be influenced by radical Islam, what a threat they face to this country, and how we are going to face this threat for years," Kerik told Newsmax.
The United States, therefore, must "have the best intelligence capabilities to ensure that local, state, and federal authorities are communicating at the highest levels — and at the best levels."
Further, law enforcement must be able "to put together every effort to stop these things from happening before they happen," Kerik said.
"These two kids were not the only guys out there with this on their minds," he added, noting the
recent arrests of four people in New York for allegedly raising money to send U.S. residents overseas to fight for Islamic State terrorists. "These things continue to pop up.
"We have people in Iraq and Syria who are going to come back — and this is what they have been doing over there.
"The biggest lesson out of this is the threat we face, the threat continues — and how important it is that we stay on top of it."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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