Tsarnaev's trial is entering its final stages. The federal jury that last month found the 21-year-old ethnic Chechen guilty of killing three people and wounding 264 others with two homemade bombs will soon begin deliberating whether to sentence him to death or life in prison without possibility of release.
"He said it emphatically. He said no one deserves to suffer like they did," the nun, Sister Helen Prejean said on Monday. "I had every reason to think that he was taking it in and that he was genuinely sorry for what he did."
Prejean, who said she had met with Tsarnaev five times this year, inspired the 1993 book and 1995 film "Dead Man Walking."