(Reuters) - Jurors in the Boston Marathon bombing trial viewed autopsy photos on Thursday of a policeman who prosecutors say was killed by defendant Dzhokhar Tsarnaev three days after the deadly bomb attacks
Tsarnaev, 21, is accused with his older brother of fatally shooting Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier on April 18, 2013, as they prepared to flee hours after the FBI released pictures of the pair, calling them suspects in the twin bomb attacks near the famed race's finish line.
Three bullets, one of them between the eyes, were fired into Collier's brain at close range. He also was shot twice and once grazed in his hand, Renee Robinson, a doctor with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Boston, testified at U.S. District Court in Boston.
"Collier inhaled his own blood" as he died, Robinson said.
In the first five days of testimony, the full court has seen gruesome photos and video of the injuries caused by the pressure-cooker bombs that killed three people and injured 264. But U.S. District Judge George O'Toole ordered autopsy photos of Collier, 27, to be shown only to the jury out of respect for his family.
Some jurors could be seen tearing up as they viewed the photos of Collier. The court also viewed pictures of blood pooled in his squad car's cup holders and on its floor.
If convicted of carrying out the bombing and of killing Collier, Tsarnaev could be sentenced to death.
Defense attorneys opened the trial last week by admitting that Tsarnaev committed the crimes for which he is accused. They are seeking to spare him the death penalty by demonstrating that he was following the lead of his older brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan, who died after a gunfight with police following Collier's shooting.
Federal prosecutors contend that the younger Tsarnaev, who emigrated with his family from Chechnya a decade before the attack, was driven by an extremist view of Islam and a desire to strike back at the United States for military campaigns in Muslim-dominated countries.
Collier's death marked the start of a chaotic 24 hours. The brothers carjacked a man and hurled explosives at police during a shootout that ended when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev roared off in a car, running over and killing his brother before disappearing into a drydocked boat in the Boston suburb of Watertown. Police found him the next evening, after a day-long lockdown of the Boston area when hundreds of thousands of people hid in their homes.
The bombing killed restaurant manager Krystle Campbell, 29, and graduate student Lingzi Lu, 23, as well as 8-year-old Martin Richard.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Barber; Editing by Scott Malone and Tom Brown)
