With the exception of Broadway debutant Tom Hanks, the acting categories were mostly filled by established theater creatures such as Laurie Metcalf, Amy Morton, Laura Osnes, Nathan Lane, Tracy Letts, David Hyde Pierce and Kristine Nielsen.

Hanks, who earned a best actor nod playing gutsy New York City newspaper columnist Mike McAlary in the late Nora Ephron's "Lucky Guy," joked that he was out of his league and that to win he'd have to beat Lane and Pierce.

"Olivier and Gielgud!" Hanks exclaimed. "It's such a thrill and a delight to be included with these guys." He added: "This makes me both giddy and nervous, and it could not be more special."

The awards will be broadcast on CBS from Radio City Music Hall on June 9. The snubs of big-name actors may mean a less starry telecast.

Stage veterans littered the play and musical categories, including the tight race to be crowned best musical. The leading contenders "Kinky Boots" and "Matilda: The Musical" are both stories that celebrate the little guy.

"Kinky Boots" is based on the 2005 British movie about a real-life shoe factory that struggles until it finds new life making fetish footwear. Cyndi Lauper's songs and a story by Harvey Fierstein both nominated have made it a crowd-pleaser.

"When we were writing this, I kept thinking 'I don't know if this show is going to be any good, but at the very least I think I've discovered a new Broadway composer,'" Fierstein said of Lauper, who was writing songs for the stage for the first time. "I could hear it. My feeling is Cyndi's going to be around for a while."

The show earned a leading 13 nominations, including sets by David Rockwell, directing and choreography by Jerry Mitchell, and nominations for its two leading men, Billy Porter and Stark Sands. Annaleigh Ashford earned a featured role nomination.

Close behind with 12 nominations is "Matilda: The Musical," the witty, dark musical adaptation of the novel by Roald Dahl that is still running in London.

"Matilda" earned nominations for Peter Darling's choreography, Matthew Warchus' directing, Chris Nightingale's orchestrations, Dennis Kelly's book, Tim Minchin's lyrics and songs, and Bertie Carvel for best leading role in a musical.

Carvel, who also played the evil headmistress Miss Trunchbull in London, said he is enjoying his time in New York, although he did admit to being nervous about how Americans would react. "I feel like I've landed on happy shores," he said. "The show is in great shape. People are loving it."

"Matilda" was one nomination shy of "Kinky Boots" and could have caught up if the four girls who rotate as the lead Sophia Gennusa, Oona Laurence, Bailey Ryon and Milly Shapiro landed a best actress nod. But they were deemed ineligible.

Both "Kinky Boots" and "Matilda" will duke it out for the best musical prize with the acrobatic "Bring It On: The Musical" and "A Christmas Story, The Musical," adapted from the beloved holiday movie.

The nominations Tuesday proved that recognition for theater work is not easy for stars. Midler, appearing on Broadway for the first time in 30 years, got nothing despite being in a one-woman show. And Johansson and Chastain, Hollywood princesses, were greeted with a Broadway shrug.

The best play nominees are Richard Greenberg's "The Assembled Parties," Ephron's "Lucky Guy," Colm Toibin's "The Testament of Mary" and Christopher Durang's "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike."

In addition to Hanks, nominees for leading actor in a play are Lane for "The Nance," Pierce from "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike," Tom Sturridge from "Orphans," and Letts from "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

"Lucky Guy" got six nominations, including a best featured actor nod for Courtney B. Vance. He and Hanks were among the few actors in the production to work with Ephron before her death last year. "She'd be ecstatic. She'd be grinning ear to ear," Vance said. "And she is, right now."

The best musical revival candidates are "Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella," ''Annie," ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood" and "Pippin," which nabbed 10 nominations.

Patina Miller, last on Broadway as the heroine of "Sister Act," stepped into the Ben Vereen role of Leading Player in "Pippin" and earned her second straight nomination.

The first time, she said, "I was so nervous about saying and doing the right things. This time, I've enjoyed it, I've been given a great opportunity and I want to keep enjoying it. Not a lot of people get to experience something like this."

The producers of "Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella" saw both their Cinderella Laura Osnes and her prince Santino Fontana nominated for leading roles in a musical.

"I'm floating on air! I think I am over the tears now," said Osnes. "I started crying when Santino's name was called. So I was already crying when they called mine. I am just so thrilled, so excited."

Candidates for best leading actress in a play include Metcalf of "The Other Place," Morton in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Nielsen of "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike," Holland Taylor in her one-woman show, "Ann," and Cicely Tyson in "The Trip to Bountiful." With such talent on show, notably squeezed out were Fiona Shaw of "The Testament of Mary" and Jessica Hecht in "The Assembled Parties."

Durang, the playwright of "Vanya and Sonia," wrote parts in it for both Nielsen and Weaver.

"We're both really lucky to have someone of his caliber that would even think of putting words in our mouth," Nielsen said. "I wish he were here to put words in my mouth today!"

The revival of Clifford Odets' "Golden Boy," a play about a young man torn between his natural talent as a violinist and the fast money and fame of being a boxer, earned eight nominations, the most for any play.

Richard Greenberg's "The Assembled Parties," a New York City drama concerning the power of familial bonds, earned three nominations, including ones for Judith Light, scenic design and best play.

"It's been so luxuriously treated by this production," the playwright said. "It was given such care and attention. I think you only get something that unblemished once. And so I'm relishing it."

Kenneth Posner had a great morning. The lighting designer got three of four slots for "Kinky Boots," ''Pippin" and "Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella." He will face off against Hugh Vanstone, the lighting designer for "Matilda: The Musical."

Playwright Douglas Carter Beane earned a best book nomination for the lush, big musical "Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella," but not for his more intimate play "The Nance," although it earned five nods. A veteran, he rolled with it Tuesday morning.

"You just have to really enjoy it when you get nominated and you have to just not care when you're not," he said. "It's one of those little rules you learn. Like, only read the reviews that they put outside the theater."

The hit-stuffed "Motown: The Musical," about Motown Records under founder Berry Gordy, earned four nominations, including Valisia LeKae as Diana Ross and Charl Brown as Smokey Robinson.

LeKae, who was an understudy or swing in four other Broadway shows, is making her Broadway debut as a leading lady and said everything in her life has prepared her for the role. She grew up listening to Ross and performing her songs.

"It's very interesting the way life works out. I left 'The Book of Mormon' last year in March and I was a swing for the show," she said. "It's amazing how life can change in a matter of a year's time. You can be swinging one year and be nominated the next."

Shalita Grant, who plays a housekeeper convinced she can see the future in "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike," was woken by her publicist with the news that she's landed a features actress nomination. Unlike her character, she never expected it.

"I did not think this was going to happen with all of the people, with all of the shows, with all of the names. I've only been on Broadway for like two months. I'm like, 'I don't see this in my future,'" she said, laughing. "You know what? We'll just hope for the best. There's a quote that I love, which is, 'If you shoot for the moon, you can usually clear the trees.'"

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AP Entertainment Writer Frazier Moore and AP National Writer Jocelyn Noveck contributed to this report.

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Follow Mark Kennedy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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Online: http://www.TonyAwards.com

Alonso's six years at the district's helm make him one of the longest-serving big-city superintendents in the country.

Under Alonso's leadership, student enrollment and graduation rates increased as suspension and dropout rates dropped.

He said Monday that he is retiring to return home to New Jersey to care for his parents and to assume a professorship at Harvard University.

His last day will be June 30. Chief of Staff Tisha Edwards will serve as an interim CEO through the next school year while the School Board searches for a permanent successor.

Included onare spaceflight entrepreneur ; breast cancer researcher Kimberly Blackwell; asteroid hunter Don Yeomans; NASA Mars rover Curiosity's project managers; and the scientists who cured an HIV-positive baby.

Leaders in medicine

Kimberly Blackwell, 44, director of theprogram at Duke Cancer Institute, made TIME'slist for her work to develop treatments for this deadly disease. Blackwell's research focuses on a highly aggressive form in which cells produce too much of the protein HER2, which accounts for about one in five breast cancers, according to the Mayo Clinic. Blackwell's treatment approach, known as a "smart bomb," consists of an anticancer toxin that contains an antibody that can recognize the tumor, so healthy cells are not affected meaningfewer side effects and better chances of survival. Film studio executive Sherry Lansing, who wrote the TIMEpiece about Blackwell, had a mother die of cancer. "The brilliant work of Kimberly and scientists like her gives us real hope that we may, at last, be turning the corner in the fight against cancer," Lansing wrote.

Three AIDS researchers Hannah Gay, Katherine Luzuriaga and Deborah Persaud earned kudos from TIMEfor . Gay, a pediatrician at the University of Mississippi; Luzuriaga, an immunologist at the University of Massachusetts; and Persaud, a virologist at Johns Hopkins Children's Center, gave an HIV-positive baby HIV antiviral drugs within hours of its birth. Two-and-a-half years later, the child appears HIV-free, and does not require medication. Although this result represents only a single case, it "gives us more ammunition in the fight against HIV and AIDS," Mark Dybul, director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, wrote in TIME. The treatment offers hope for preventing AIDS in newborns, and possibly even adults a recent study claims 14 other patients have been able to keep their HIV under control.

Space pioneers

in this year's list, as stories of private rocket launches and meteorite impacts dominated the headlines. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, 41, appears on one of seven separate TIME covers and is listed in the "titans" category. TIME's tribute by business magnate Richard Branson hails Musk's achievements in private spaceflight (which include two successful unmanned missions to the International Space Station with SpaceX's Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket). Musk, who also founded the companies Paypal, Tesla Motors and SolarCity, also gets a nod for his work in developing clean, renewable energy.

NASA asteroid hunter , 70, made the list in Time's "pioneers" category. Yeomens finds and tracks near-Earth objects, and "is one of the reasons we can all sleep a little better at night," according to former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who founded the asteroid-hunting B612 Foundation and wrote about Yeomans for Time. Yeomans leads a team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) that uses data collected by telescopes around the world to predict the trajectory of space rocks that could pose a threat to Earth years or decades from now. This threat was brought home earlier this year by the meteor explosion over Chelyablinsk, Russia, on Feb. 15, and the unrelated flyby of Asteroid 2012 DA14. Someday a stray rock might warrant a deflection campaign to spare humanity from the same fate as the dinosaurs, Schweickart wrote. []

In light of the successful deployment of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, TIME recognized the missions project managers Peter Theisinger and Richard Cook, of JPL. Theisinger, 67, and Cook, 47, orchestrated the harrowing task of sending an SUV-sized spacecraft to Mars and lowering it on cables to the Red Planet's surface, where it is currently exploring. Seven months after landing, the rover has already found , its primary mission goal. "We can't thank Pete, Richard and their team enough for getting [the rover] there safely, and we should continue to thank them for the wisdom and thrills the rover will bring us as it explores its new home," wrote Caltech space scientist and former JPL Director Ed Stone in TIME.

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The Women in Film organization, which promotes gender parity in the historically male-dominated film business, will honor winners in six award categories at a fundraiser in Beverly Hills in June.

Linney, 49, best known for her Oscar-nominated performance in the 2007 film "The Savages," will receive the award for Excellence in Film.

Five "Mad Men" actresses, Christina Hendricks, January Jones, Elisabeth Moss, Jessica Par and Kiernan Shipka, will be honored with the Excellence in Television award.

Each actress plays a character that defines the changing gender roles in the 1960s United States portrayed in the series.

Oscar-winner Coppola, 41, who was also nominated for the Best Director Academy Award for 2003's "Lost in Translation," will receive the Directors Award, and "Star Wars" director George Lucas will take home the Humanitarian Award.

Teenage actress Hailee Steinfeld, known for her Oscar-nominated role in the 2010 film "True Grit," will be honored with the Face of the Future Award and Rachel Morrison will receive the Vision Award for cinematography.

Women in Film began hosting the awards in 1977.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; editing by Patricia Reaney and Cynthia Osterman)

A project designed to promote an art exhibit has turned 5,000 Manhattan pay phones into time machines that take callers back to 1993, a pivotal year in the city's art, culture and politics.

Pick up a receiver on the rarely used phones that still dot the New York streetscape, punch 1-855-FOR-1993 and you will hear a notable resident recounting what life was like on that block 20 years ago.

"We liked, creatively, the idea of using a sort of slightly broken, disused system as the canvas of this project," said Scott Chinn of Droga5, the ad agency behind the campaign for an exhibit titled "NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star."

An eclectic mix of artists, writers, food and fashion stars, and others has been recruited to reminisce, including chef Mario Batali, actor Chazz Palminteri, porn performer Robin Byrd and former Yankees pitcher Jim Abbott, who threw a no-hitter in 1993.

The narrators describe a New York that was dirtier, bloodier, raunchier and less gentrified than today but also an easier place for a talented young person to gain a foothold.

Batali says in his sound bite that opening a restaurant was easier in 1993 when he debuted his first restaurant, Po.

"You didn't have to have a rich daddy or an investor or put together a team or anything like that," he says. "It's sad to watch the cost of business push the real individualist entrepreneurs out of the game."

Bike shop owner Dave Ortiz remembers when the city's Meatpacking District, now home to trendy restaurants, nightclubs and pricey boutiques, was the wild, wild West.

"The rats were huge," he says. "They were as big as cats, so you had to walk in the middle of the street. It's amazing what they turned it into. It's cool but it's lost its, like, authenticity."

Rudy Giuliani was elected New York City mayor in 1993 and promised to crack down on crime and make the city more livable. The number of homicides in the city 1,960 in 1993 had already dropped from a high of 2,245 in 1990 but has plunged steeply since then. (There were 414 in all of last year.)

The city's AIDS crisis peaked in 1993 at 12,744 diagnoses. Terrorists staged the first attack on the World Trade Center. The look of the city has changed dramatically as national retailers have replaced independent merchants. New York City's first Starbucks opened in 1994.

"There was a presence of a kind of downtown underground scene which you really don't experience in New York anymore," recalled Gary Carrion-Murayari, curator of the exhibit at the New Museum featuring 161 works, many intended to shock with sexual imagery.

Lutz Bacher's "My Penis," for example, repeats a video snippet from the 1991 Florida rape trial of William Kennedy Smith, a nephew of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, in which Smith testifies about the organ in question.

In Pepn Osorio's "The Scene of the Crime (Whose Crime?)," a blood-soaked sheet covers what appears to be a corpse. Four nude mannequins join hands and stare into space in Charles Ray's "Family Romance." Political issues are tackled head-on in works like Sue Williams' "Are you Pro-Porn or Anti-Porn?"

The exhibit and accompanying pay phone campaign run through May 26.

Pay phones in the Times Square area feature X-rated talk-show host Byrd describing the neighborhood before Disney musicals and theme-park stores made it safe for tourists.

"The area wasn't really as dangerous as people thought it was in those days," Byrd says. "Because most of the bums that you thought were bums on the street were really undercover cops."

She adds: "It was a great time. It's too bad it's changed because now it's very pasteurized, homogenized, and it looks like Vegas."

Rumford, winner of last week's Ballantine's Championship in a playoff, recorded three consecutive birdies from the sixth and parred the other 15 holes to move ahead of overnight leader Mikko Ilonen of Finland at the $3.2 million co-sanctioned event.

"That was a tough day," Rumford told reporters after finishing the day on 12-under par for the tournament. "I really started to feel things on the back nine.

"I did really well to hang in nicely with some tired golf swings. I mentally stayed with it - physically not so much, but mentally I hung in there.

"The wind was really starting to dry things out, so you've got to be very precise."

Ilonen, who had a three-stroke cushion heading into the weekend, started and ended his third round with bogeys for a one-over-par 73.

The Finn, who is looking to end a six-year trophy drought on the European Tour, has already finished ninth in Qatar and second in Morocco this season and was happy to be in the mix once again.

"It was a good fight out there," Ilonen said. "His (Rumford's) short game today was incredible and his confidence is obviously very high, especially on the greens, so I'm going to have to play very well to beat him tomorrow.

"It's good to be in the final group tomorrow. In Morocco earlier in the season, I had a bad round on the Saturday and dropped out of the last group.

"So I'm pleased with the way I ground out a score today, even though I didn't maybe play my best golf."

Spain's Pablo Larrazabal shot a 69 to lie two shots behind the leader in third while Thailand's Kiradech Aphibarnrat, who won his maiden European Tour title at the Malaysian Open in March, sits alone in fourth place, a further stroke adrift. (Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai; Editing by John O'Brien)

Asked about Syria at a news conference in Costa Rica, Obama said: "We will stay on this."

He says if systematic use of chemical weapons in Syria is confirmed, the United States will present that evidence to the international community, because it concerns the entire world.

But Obama declined to say what action the U.S. might take. He called for caution to avoid unintended consequences. In his words, "It's important for us to do it right."

Its founders -- a 61-year-old former college professor and a 27-year-old former campaign aide -- seemed an unlikely pair to stir up grassroots support for .

But since its formation earlier this year and its official launch at the beginning of the month, the Ready for Hillary PAC has already had an impressive track record. The group, which calls itself "the nation's premier organization urging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2016 and laying the groundwork of support for her potential candidacy," has developed more than a whiff of legitimacy.

According to organizers, financial contributions -- more than 1,000 of them -- have been pouring in. Activists have gathered for boisterous pro-Hillary events outside two of the former secretary of state's recent speaking appearances (in Washington, D.C., and New York). And Ready for Hillary has built a slick website and a fast-growing social media presence.

Ready for Hillary has also amped up its credibility in a big way over the past two weeks with a series of high-profile endorsements from three prominent Clinton backers: Democratic strategist James Carville, long-time Clinton confidant Harold Ickes and former California congresswoman Ellen Tauscher.

"She needs to know -- and it's our goal to demonstrate to her and to the country -- thatthere's an army ready to help her candidacy," the group's communications director Seth Bringman said in an interview with ABC News.

What began as a quirky venture run by Bringman and a handful of Clinton fanatics, is suddenly looking a lot more serious. Organizers are assembling something of a shadow campaign-in-waiting, complete with an email list 150,000 supporters strong -- and growing. And although the super PAC would be legally barred from coordinating with Clinton's campaign if she decides to run, the group's success in cultivating a grassroots network, raising money and sparking genuine passion for her candidacy (a political ingredient that Barack Obama arguably had in greater supply in 2008) could send a powerful signal to potential challengers from both parties and to Clinton herself, who remains the group's most important target audience.

Bringman said that the recent support from both Carville and Ickes was a "huge" boost for the organization.

"I'm not going to waste my time writing you about how great Hillary is or how formidable she'd be -- you know it all already," Carville wrote in a recent message sent to the group's email network. "But it isn't worth squat to have the fastest car at the racetrack if there ain't any gas in the tank -- and that's why the work that the Ready for Hillary PAC is doing is absolutely critical. We need to convert the hunger that's out there for Hillary's candidacy into a real grassroots organization."

Carville's note stressed one of the key reasons the small band of committed Hillary enthusiasts decided to form the group in the first place: Clinton had to cease her political organizing activities during her four years at the State Department.

"We owe it to Hillary to start putting the building blocks of her campaign together now," wrote Carville, who advised her 2008 presidential bid and served as a top strategist to Bill Clinton. "The modern political campaign demands it."

A few days later, Ickes, a Clinton stalwart and expert fundraiser, chimed in on behalf of the upstart group, telling the Sunday Times of London that he had signed on as an adviser.

And last week, Ready for Hillary circulated a news release trumpeting the addition of Tauscher, who served for three years as undersecretary of state in the Clinton administration, as a supporter and strategic adviser to the group.

"I have been up close to her -- as close as you can get," Tauscher said in an interview with ABC News. "She is second to none. I will support herwhatever she does, but selfishly, I hope she runs."

Tauscher, who represented a Northern California congressional district for a dozen years before leaving for the State Department, has already put her money where her mouth is. She wrote the group a $2,500 check this month.

Her donation was its first clue it had a potential big-name surrogate in the midst. Tauscher said that within hours of contributing to the Ready for Hillary website, a staff member called to ask if she was, in fact, "the Ellen Tauscher."

"I thought it was pretty funny," she said.

Bringman said the support of Tauscher and many others shows "there's no shortage of folks who want to help Hillary, want her to run for president and want to see her succeed."

As proof of that, he blasted out an email message to supporters over the weekend, noting that Ready for Hillary blew past the 100,000 fan mark on Facebook. He wrote that the group "has been expanding its social media base at a rate of one new person every 14 seconds," helping it amass more than 55,000 Twitter followers too.

Despite Ready for Hillary's thousands of newfound friends, the group currently employs just three paid staffers: Bringman, who works out of his home in Columbus, Ohio, and worked on Clinton's 2008 bid; Matt Felan, the national finance director who is based in Michigan and served as deputy national finance director for Clinton's campaign five years ago; and Nickie Titus, the group's digital director who was director of digital media on Tim Kaine's successful 2012 Virginia Senate campaign.

The group's co-founders, Allida Black and Adam Parkhomenko, have been volunteering their time. Black was a professor at George Washington University for 20 years and is now an independent historian. In an office on the second floor of her brick colonial home in Arlington, Va., Black surrounds herself with books and photos of Clinton and other political leaders. Among her treasured possessions is a pair of orange high-top sneakers signed by Clinton that Black said she wore while traveling the country as a super-volunteer for Hillary during the 2008 campaign.

Black, who hatched the idea for Ready for Hillary with Parkhomenko shortly after the 2012 election said that the goal was simple: to "build the most effective operation that we can to buy Hillary some time."

"We are not a fly-by-night group," Black said. "We know what we're doing."

She and Bringman said that neither of them has received pushback from members of the Clinton's inner circle."We've gotten nothing but encouragement," Bringman noted, from people close to the former first lady. "I don't think there's anyone who would tell Hillary supporters not to express their support for her."

And organizers say they this is only the beginning. Parkhomenko plans to become the group's executive director next month. The finance operation will grow to include a team of regional fundraisers across the country. The group plans to acquire office space in the Washington, D.C., area sometime in the next few months. And the super PAC will file its first fundraising report this summer.

But supporters and donors such as Tauscher, who was effusive about Ready for Hillary's efforts when reached at her home in California last week, said the PAC's organic feel was what attracted her to it in the first place.

"That's what I loved about it," she said. "There's nothing better than to have a real grassroots movement made up of grassroots people that are much more in tune with people than those inside the Washington bubble."

Other Clintonites, however, continue to view the effort with a dose of skepticism. One former Clinton 2008 campaign staffer said Ready for Hillary appeared to be a good vehicle for the latent enthusiasm that exists for another Clinton White House bid but predicted that it would ultimately have little impact on her political calculus.

But Black, Parkhomenko, Bringman and their small band of Clinton warriors simply can't wait for Hillary to make up her mind.

"She's a leader of my lifetime," Black said, "and I could not sit this out in good conscience."

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A decision to charge the Boston Marathon bombing suspect in a civilian rather than a military court means he will face the same legal process as other federal criminal defendants in U.S. courts.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was charged on Monday with using a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property resulting in death.

The White House said earlier that Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, would not be treated as an enemy combatant for his alleged role in last week's bomb attacks, which killed three people and wounded more than 200.

These are the likely next steps in his case, legal experts said.

INDICTMENT, PLEA NEGOTIATIONS

After a defendant is charged by a complaint, prosecutors then typically take their evidence to a grand jury and seek a formal indictment.

If the grand jury returns an indictment on the weapons-of-mass-destruction charge, which can carry the death penalty, the court will appoint lawyers with experience in death penalty cases, said Kelly Currie, a former federal prosecutor in New York who oversaw violent crime and terrorism cases.

Plea negotiations are likely to begin almost immediately, given the apparent evidence against Tsarnaev.

"If defense counsel is convinced the case against her client is exceptionally strong, speaking about a plea or possible cooperation is something defense counsel will be considering," said Michael Rosensaft, another former federal prosecutor from New York.

Prosecutors also will be deciding whether or not to seek the death penalty. That decision is expected within weeks, and the prosecution and defense will be given an opportunity to weigh in on any mitigating or aggravating factors. The ultimate determination will be made by the U.S. attorney general.

Prosecutors will move quickly to make that assessment, since "that obviously changes the tone of the case," Rosensaft said. Tsarnaev's attorney also may use a guilty plea as leverage to ask the government to take the death penalty off the table.

Three attorneys from the Massachusetts federal public defenders office - Miriam Conrad, Timothy Watkins and William Fick - were listed as representing Tsarnaev in court filings. The office did not immediately return a call for comment Monday evening.

Conrad filed a motion late Monday seeking the appointment of at least two attorneys with experience in death-penalty cases. U.S. law requires that at least one experienced attorney be appointed in every potential capital case. "Given the magnitude of this case," Conrad said it would be appropriate to appoint at least two additional lawyers with death penalty experience, in addition to his federal defenders, according to the motion.

Tsarnaev's attorneys also may use access to their client as a bargaining chip. If prosecutors want to find out if he has any valuable information to offer, defense attorneys may be able to leverage that during plea negotiations, Currie said.

"It's a delicate discussion and it goes back and forth," he said.

DISCOVERY

Both sides will begin the discovery process, meaning they will start compiling evidence. If the case against Tsarnaev includes any potentially classified information that could impact national security, then prosecutors could ask a judge to keep that under seal.

Prosecutors also will have to disclose any evidence that might exonerate or mitigate the case against Tsarnaev to defense counsel.

Since law enforcement officials sought the public's help during the investigation, they have likely received thousands of tips that will need to be examined to see if any of them could suggest Tsarnaev is innocent, or that others were involved, Currie said. If so, prosecutors will have to turn that over to the defense.

"There's a huge amount of information that the government is going to have to sort through and provide to the defense," Currie said. "It's a huge challenge for both prosecution and defense teams."

CIVILIAN COURTS MORE TRANSPARENT

Some Republican lawmakers had called on the Obama administration to designate Tsarnaev as an enemy combatant, which would have restricted his rights. The enemy combatant status arose in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, and some suspects so-designated have been detained at a U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

But White House spokesman Jay Carney said that was off the table. "Under U.S. law, United States citizens cannot be tried in military commissions," Carney said.

The biggest difference between a trial in civilian court and before a military commission is transparency, Rosensaft said.

"With this case, there's so much evidence that's publicly available, that the public already knows, that I don't think airing that evidence against him in federal court would implicate any national security concerns," Rosensaft said.

If Tsarnaev pleads guilty and eschews a trial, it is possible much of prosecutors' evidence against him may never become public, beyond the massive amount of photo, video and other evidence that has already circulated publicly.

By charging him in federal court, prosecutors may also open themselves open to a motion from the defense to suppress any statements made to law enforcement after his arrest.

This is because officials did not read him his Miranda rights immediately. A transcript of the bedside hearing in the hospital on Monday showed he was read his rights then.

Tsarnaev was captured last Friday after a massive manhunt and was taken to a hospital in Boston with gunshot wounds following gunfights with police.

The Miranda issue would mostly impact any statements made by Tsarnaev to police after his arrest, but not the photos, video and other evidence linking him to the crime that has already been compiled, legal experts said.

Enemy combatants do not typically need to be read their Miranda rights - but even in civilian cases, Miranda warnings can be waived for a limited window of time under the so-called public safety exception. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that law enforcement officials can engage in a limited and focused interrogation without warning the suspect, if they believe public safety is at stake.

Judges likely will be sympathetic to the exception invoked by authorities, given the fear at the time that other attacks may have been planned. It also is unclear what statements, if any, Tsarnaev, who was badly wounded, made to law enforcement before his attorney came into the case.

His injuries included throat wounds and it was not clear how much he communicated with anyone before the complaint was filed.

But "if there's any statement they want to use against him," the Miranda issue is "something defense counsel will be fixated on," Rosensaft said.

The case is U.S. v. Tsarnaev, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, No. 13-2106.

(Reporting by Jessica Dye; Editing by Bill Trott)