"Not guilty."
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev stood at the front of a Boston federal courthouse on Wednesday and spoke those words seven times, pleading innocent to all 30 counts against him, including bombing of a place of public use resulting in death and the killing of an MIT police officer.
Some victims of the bombing were present in the court room, but Tsarnaev did not glance at them once. Liz Norden, who spoke with CBS News after the trial, said that being so close to a convicted killer made her stomach churn, but she wanted to see him in person.
"He just showed no remorse, it looked like he smirked at everybody and he just had a carefree attitude, like nothing, no emotions whatsoever," she said of Tsarnaev.
The 19-year-old former University of Massachusetts Dartmouth student looked at his family members sitting in the wings every now and then and smiled at them. Two of his next-of-kin pushed tears off their cheeks, while another gave Tsarnaev the thumbs up, CBS reported. He did not seem to recognize the presence of the victims.
An uncle of two boys who sustained injuries from the bombs said that the teen "never looked at us, he never turned in our direction, we were sitting directly behind him."
John DiFava, who heads up the MIT Police force, called Tsarnaev a "punk."
Tsarnaev's face had swelled up on one side, and his left hand was bandaged, ABC reported from the court room.
Before he exited, he blew kisses to his crying sisters looking on.
Dzhokhar is suspected of working with older brother Tamerlan to place two pressure-cooker bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, which killed two and injured 260 others. Prosecutors also allege that Dzhokhar killed an MIT police officer during a shootout with law enforcement officials.
Tsarnaev's trial is slated to begin at the tail end of September. The Justice Department may seek the death penalty for Dzhokhar if he is convicted.