Boston Bomber was Drunk, High before Going Radical

Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev smoked pot, partied and drank before turning radical, witnesses told the trial of his younger brother, who faces the death penalty over the 2013 attacks.

"Most of the time he was drunk, most of the time he was high," said Rugiero Franca, a Brazilian who lived with two roommates, a Russian and an Egyptian, near Tamerlan in 2008 and 2009.

Tamerlan, he said Tuesday, came over three or four times a week, sometimes every day, to smoke marijuana in their basement. He would also drink and go clubbing with the other flatmates, Franca said.

Tamerlan once objected when Franca asked him to stop smoking and once he came home from work and found the three men in his bedroom "dividing drugs." 

"I told everybody to get out," Franca said.

After leaving the area, Franca bumped into Tamerlan by chance on a street in Boston in 2012, wearing a beard and accompanied by his wife, Muslim-convert Katherine Russell, who was veiled.

"He asked me: 'you are not a Muslim yet?' I never expected he could ask me such a thing," Franca said, adding that Tamerlan had hardly ever discussed religion in earlier years.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's crack defense team launched its bid Monday to save the 21-year-old from the death penalty, instead accusing 26-year-old Tamerlan of orchestrating the 2013 Marathon bombings.

The April 15, 2013 attacks killed three people and wounded 264 in one of the deadliest attacks in the U.S. since 9/11.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted on 30 counts related to the bombings, the murder of a police officer, a carjacking and a shootout while on the run.

Tamerlan was shot dead by police four days after the attacks, leaving his younger brother alone to face trial.

 - Jihad videos - 

Expert Mark Spencer told court that in 2012, the elder Tsarnaev installed an encryption device on his computers, while Dzhokhar, who sat emotionless in court, did not.

In April 2012, Tamerlan's homepage was a picture of bloodied bodies lying on the floor. A note on Tamerlan's desktop in Russian called on believers to join Allah's "campaign."

The defense also showed video clips inciting violent jihad to the 12 jurors, the same panel who convicted Dzhokhar this month.

The sentencing phase of the trial will see the jury decide whether to condemn Dzhokhar to death or life without parole.

On his laptop, among the encrypted files, were photographs of him dressed in white, head covered, and of Islamist propaganda including copies English-language al-Qaida magazine "Inspire."

In 2012, Tamerlan spent six months in Russia apparently looking to take part in jihad. He spoke to his wife Katherine about fighters in Syria, sending her photos and video links.

She also researched on her own computer the compensation given to the wife of a "martyr," the trial heard.

Defense lawyers have portrayed an itinerant family history, a culture where authority stemmed from the father and older brother and a mother who was "a destructive force" in all around her.

It was a "nomadic" life of "turmoil" moving from Kyrgyzstan to Dagestan, before they settled in the Boston region in 2002.

After their parents, suffering from psychological problems, moved back to Russia in 2012, the court heard that Tamerlan became the only adult reference for his little brother.

He was "a good kid" who became "a lost teenager" and when Tamerlan began to "go off the rails, he pulled his younger brother" with him, the defense argued Monday.

Lawyers are expected to take two weeks to build their case.

Jurors have to agree unanimously on the death penalty, which applies to 17 of 30 counts on which he has been convicted, or else Dzhokhar will spend the rest of his life in jail.