The United States Justice Department announced it would seek the death penalty against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the survivor of two brothers accused of planting bombs that killed and maimed spectators watching runners cross the finish line at the Boston Marathon last year.

The state of Massachusetts abolished the death penalty in 1984, and hadn’t even executed a prisoner since 1947.  But Tsarnaev is charged in federal court, making this the highest profile federal death penalty case since right-wing terrorist Timothy McVeigh was executed for the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Tsarnaev allegedly told prosecutors the brothers were motivated by radical Islam, although authorities say they were self-radicalized and not part of any terror group.  They got the plans for the bombs off of the Internet.

No trial date has been set.  In nearly half of federal death penalty cases, prosecutors withdraw the threat of execution before trial, usually because of a plea bargain.

On 15 April 2013, prosecutors say Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan planted two homemade explosive devices along the Boston Marathon route; one near the finish line, and the other positioned down the block and set to explode as terrified people fled the first blast.  Three people were killed and more than 260 were injured, many losing limbs to the shrapnel the brothers designed into the bombs.

A cop was killed in a shootout with Tamerlan three days later, and Tamerlan himself was killed by police in a second running gun battle in the suburbs of Boston.