The trial of Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev resumed today with the defense giving its opening statements and calling three witnesses to the stand. Tsarnaev’s lawyers are desperately trying to save him from death.

From the very start of the trial, the defense team has been working to get the now 23-year-old’s sentence reduced to life in prison without parole.

“No matter what [Tsarnaev] does now, no matter what regrets he feels, no matter how he matures, no matter what amends he might want to make, his last choice came when he was 19, and he will never have the chance to make another choice again,” said defense attorney David Bruck.

The defense’s opening statements have allowed the attorneys to play up the role of Tamerlan, Dzhokhar’s older brother. The three witness who took the stand today testified that Tamerlan had adopted a radicalized view of Islam and was hostile, even aggressive. The defense argues that masterminded of the marathon attack was Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, or Jahar as he is called by those close to him, was just the adoring younger brother.

“No one is going to claim that Tamerlan forced Dzhokhar to commit these terrible crimes,” said Bruck. “But the evidence will show that if Tamerlan hadn’t led the way, Dzhokhar never would have done any of these things… How do we know this? Because Tamerlan’s motivation to carry out this attack was so much stronger and had been building for so much longer.”

The defense’s opening statements were pressured and persuasive, evoking the witnesses stories of the attack as an unparalleled atrocity.

“We have seen more pain and more horror and more grief in this courtroom than any of you would have thought possible,” said Bruck. “No punishment could ever be equal to the terrible effects of this crime on the survivors and the victims’ families. There is no evening of the scales. There is no point of trying to hurt him as he hurt because it can’t be done. All we can do, all you can do is make the best choice.”

With powerful language, the attorney explained that the jury had two options: give him life or give him death.

To strengthen his argument that life in a high-security prison would be a far worse fate than death, Bruck showed the court a picture of ADX Florence, a super-maximum prison high in the Colorado Rockies. The compound was desolate and covered in snow; the each cell only had one small, barred window tilted towards the sky.

“This is where the government keeps other terrorists who used to be famous but aren’t anymore. … He goes here and he’s forgotten. No more spotlight, like the death penalty brings. No interviews with the news media, no autobiography, no messages from Jahar on the Internet. No nothing. No martyrdom. Just years and years of punishment, day after day, as he grows up to face the lonely struggle of dealing with what he did. The evidence will show that if you sentence Jahar to a lifetime of thinking about what he did, you’ll both punish him and protect society.”