The jury in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's trial will ultimately decide whether or not the admitted Boston Marathon Bomber should be put to death or spend the rest of his life in prison.
On Thursday, the jurors publicly received the first few bits of information on the "supermax" prison, which has been referred to as a "clean version of hell,' that he would call home if capital punishment is bypassed, according to NBC News.
Tsarnaev would not be the only terrorist at the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility. Located in Colorado near the Rocky Mountains, the facility, known as ADX or supermax, is full of some of the most notorious criminals alive.
The Boston Bomber would be neighbors with Ted Kaczynski, better know as the Unabomber, Eric Rudolph, who bombed the Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics, two Al Qaeda operatives connected to 9/11 and the 1994 World Trade Center Bombing, as well as Terry Nicholas, who helped Timothy McVeigh plan the Oklahoma City Bombing of 1995. Multiple serial killers live there too.
As The Wall Street Journal points out, the jury now must decide if living in a place like supermax is worse, and therefore a harsher sentence, than death. Earlier this week, Mark Bezy, a longtime employee of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, took the stand and talked about just how isolated 21-year-old Tsarnaev would be in any prison he is sent to because of the special confinement measures he would have.
"These prisoners have very limited phone contact with immediate family, who can visit only behind security glass," Bezy testified, according to The Wall Street Journal. "It's a mechanism to cut off an inmate's communication with the outside world."
The prosecution had issues with Bezy's testimony though, citing during cross-examination that he was never employed at supermax (or any other Colorado prison) and never worked with inmates who needed the confinement measures Tsarnaev would. A large part of the argument revolved around the fact that Bezy, who is retired, "gets nearly all his income testifying for the defense in capital cases," as the Wall Street Journal put it.
Prosecutor Steven Mellin also said that heavy confinement measures can sometimes be lifted in prisons, supermax included, but Bezy believes that wouldn't happen to Tsarnaev because he will never be safe around fellow inmates.
