Boston bomber sentencing hearing begins

It's the day of final reckoning for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a day set aside for emotional victim impact statements and stern words from the judge.The outcome of Wednesday morning's

The outcome of Wednesday morning's federal sentencing hearing is a foregone conclusion. The decision to impose the death penalty belonged to the jury, so the hearing is a formality. Few surprises are expected in the hearing that started at 9:30 a.m.ET.

The only lingering question is whether Tsarnaev might talk. And if he does, what could he possibly say?

The 21-year-old former college student is the first person to be handed a death sentence in a federal terrorism case since the attacks of September 11, 2001. He and his older brother, Tamerlan, who died while fleeing police, set off two bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013.

Two women and an 8-year-old boy were killed and more than 260 other people were injured. Many of those injuries will last a lifetime. The blasts left 17 people all active, outdoorsy people -- amputees. A fourth person, an MIT cop, was killed during the hunt for the Tsarnaevs.

Prosecutors say the Tsarnaev brothers set off homemade bombs -- fireworks, BBs, nails and metal shards packed inside pressure cookers to become martyrs to the cause of jihad. They also sought to punish Americans for the deaths of Muslims overseas.

Tsarnaev said nothing in court during his 10-week trial. Until now, his only public words of explanationexist in a rambling "manifesto" scrawled with a pencil on the sides of a boat. Punctuated by bullet holes and streaked with blood, the message was written sometime during the 18 hours Tsarnaev hid in the boat in a Watertown, Massachusetts, backyard after a gunbattle with police.

At the defense table, Tsarnaev fiddled with his bushy beard and tangle of curls, betraying no emotion as survivors and families of the dead told their heart-rending stories. His face was blank as horrific images of the devastation he caused filled the screens inside the courtroom.

The only flicker of emotion came when he appearedto wipe a tear from his eye while an elderly aunt, brought from Russia by the defense, dissolved into tears and gasping sobs on the witness stand.