On the sixth day of deliberations, a federal jury reached a verdict Tuesday in the case of Robel Phillipos, who is a friend of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and is accused of lying to law enforcement agents investigating the case.
Since getting the case last week, the 12 jurors have deliberated for 34 hours over five days in US District Court in Boston. Phillipos is accused of lying about his whereabouts and observations on April 18, 2013, when two University of Massachusetts Dartmouth friends took a backpack containing evidence from Tsarnaev's dorm room.
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At the conclusion of Monday's deliberations, Phillipos defense attorney Derege Demissie asked US District Judge Douglas P. Woodlock whether he planned to ask for an update from the jury.
Woodlock said he was 'disinclined' to initiate contact with the jury, and noted that he had seen juries take a week or more to reach a verdict. If jurors are deadlocked, he said, it will be up to them to inform him of their impasse.
'They're in charge,' he said as Phillipos, 21, looked on, flanked by his two Cambridge attorneys.
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The text messages were entered as evidence in the trial of Phillipos.
If jurors say they are deadlocked, they are typically instructed by judges to try again; however if they ultimately can't agree, the case ends in a hung jury.
In such cases, prosecutors have the option to retry the case.
Phillipos attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School and UMass Dartmouth with Tsarnaev, and is one of three Tsarnaev friends charged with interfering with the terror bombing investigation.
The two other friends, Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, both from Kazakhstan, have been convicted of obstruction of justice for taking a backpack, which contained emptied fireworks, from Tsarnaev's dorm room and later tossing it in a trash container.
Phillipos is not charged with handling the backpack, but he is charged with misleading investigators about what he saw that night.
Prosecutors say he lied about being in Tsarnaev's dorm room and seeing the removal of the backpack. His attorneys, however, say he did not accurately recall that night because he was high on marijuana. The backpack was later recovered by FBI agents.
Phillipos faces two counts of making false statements during two interviews. If jurors convict him of lying, they also have decide whether his false statements involved a terrorism investigation. If so, the maximum prison time for Phillipos on each count increases from five to eight years.
Tsarnaev's trial is scheduled to begin in January. He is accused of joining his older brother, Tamerlan, in setting off two homemade bombs at the Marathon finish line. His brother later died in a shoot-out with police.
Laura Crimaldi can be reached at laura.crimaldi@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @lauracrimaldi. Patricia Wen can be reached at wen@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @globepatty.
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