Now that a jury has convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on all charges, even more is at stake in the next phase of the federal trial: The same 12 people must decide whether the 21-year-old lives or dies.
He did it. We all knew he did it. The prosecution knew it. The defence, the jury, the judge. Everyone apart from the wacko conspiracists knew that on a Monday afternoon, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev walked through Boston and exploded a terrible bomb.
There was so much video and so many photos to consider and process in those first few days. Body-armoured cops with urban tanks and assault rifles guarded every corner and leered at every foreign journalist's ID.
During the trial it was easy to forget that for three days after the explosions, we didn't know who to blame. You could look at those clean surveillance pictures, the two brothers with their baseball caps strolling through the crowd, and forget that for an uncomfortable period everyone in Boston was a suspect.
You could look at the pictures of the blasts, the thump of the explosions, the clean flashes and the dust, and still not appreciate the sheer violence and trauma, tearing and screaming and blood. Ball bearings and nails: no wonder so many people lost legs.
I returned to Boston for the anniversary marathon, for which the crowds were joyous and proud. Spiteful? Not outwardly, but when you asked some people they didn't hesitate to tell you what they hoped would happen next.
Death.
It's hard to be executed under federal law. The jury that convicted Tsarnaev will decide now if he lives 60 years in a cell or is strapped to a gurney and put to death like a household pet with arthritic legs. Both options feel medieval and there are no others.
Legally, the judge can overrule a jury's decision. No judge in America ever has.
Punishment and justice are personal calls. Limbless survivors and the families of the dead are divided.
We all knew he did it but no one knows for sure if Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will die.