Well, there goes his defense, I suppose. Via Breitbart:
Al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui testified Monday that he and would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid were supposed to hijack a fifth airplane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House.
Moussaoui’s testimony on his own behalf stunned the courtroom as he disclosed details he had never revealed before. It was in stark contrast to Moussaoui’s previous statements in which he said the White House attack was to come later if the United States refused to release a radical Egyptian sheik imprisoned on earlier terrorist convictions.
Moussaoui testified Monday he lied to investigators when arrested in August 2001 because he wanted to let the attacks of Sept. 11 go forward.
“Yes, you can say that,” Moussaoui said when the prosecution asked if that was why he misled them. The statement was key to the government’s case that the attacks might have been averted if Moussaoui had been more cooperative following his arrest.
He told the court he knew the attacks were coming some time after August 2001 and bought a radio so he could hear them unfold.
Specifically, he said he knew the World Trade Center was going to be attacked, but asserted he was not part of the plot and didn’t know the details.
[…]
Moussaoui testified calmly in his death penalty trial, but against his lawyers’ wishes.
Before he took the stand, his lawyers made a last attempt to stop him from testifying, but failed. Defense attorney Gerald Zerkin argued that his client would not be a competent witness because he has contempt for the court, only recognizes Islamic law and therefore “the affirmation he undertakes would be meaningless.”
Asked by Zerkin if he was supposed to be one of the men who would pilot a plane on 9/11, he said no, adding: “I’m sorry, I don’t know about the number of planes but I was not the fifth (pilot) hijacker.”
The 19 terrorists on Sept. 11 hijacked and crashed four airliners, killing nearly 3,000 people in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and on the planes.
About his guilty plea, he said: “I took a pen. I signed it.”
He said talked with an al-Qaida official in 1999 about why a 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center failed to bring the towers down. He said “was asked in the same period for the first time if I want to be a suicide pilot and I declined.”
Yet, he said he was taking flight training for a separate attack on the White House, when he was arrested in August 2001 on immigration charges. He was vague on whether this attack was to have been after Sept. 11 or on it.
“I know it was something going on,” he said in French-accented English. “We don’t do single operation. We do multiple strikes.”
He told the court it was “difficult to say” whether he was involved in the planning for 9/11. At some point, he said, he received training on what to do if at the controls of a hijacked plane if a fighter aircraft approached.
Just before Moussaoui took the stand, the court heard testimony that two months before the attacks that a CIA deputy chief waited in vain for permission to tell the FBI about a “very high interest” al-Qaida operative who became one of the hijackers.
The official, a senior figure in the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit, said he sought authorization on July 13, 2001, to send information to the FBI but got no response for 10 days, then asked again.
As it turned out, the information on Khalid al-Mihdhar did not reach the FBI until late August. At the time, CIA officers needed permission from a special unit before passing certain intelligence on to the FBI.
The official was identified only as John. His written testimony was read into the record.
“John’s” testimony was part of the defense’s case that federal authorities missed multiple opportunities to catch hijackers and perhaps thwart the 9/11 plot.
His testimony included an e-mail sent by FBI supervisor Michael Maltbie discussing Moussaoui but playing down his terrorist connections. Maltbie’s e-mail said “there’s no indication that (Moussaoui) had plans for any nefarious activity.”
He sent that e-mail to the CIA even after receiving a lengthy memo from the FBI agent who arrested Moussaoui and suspected him of being a terrorist with plans to hijack aircraft.
Former FBI agent Erik Rigler, the first defense witness, was questioned about a Justice Department report that he said criticized the CIA for keeping intelligence about two known al-Qaida terrorist operatives in the United States from the FBI for more than a year.
Under cross-examination from the prosecution, he acknowledged the report did not link the pair specifically to a civil aviation plot. But he said the report’s thrust was about their preparations for what turned out to be the 9/11 attacks, and their ability to elude federal agents.
“That’s why they came here,” he said. “They didn’t come for Disney.”
The two were among the 19 suicide hijackers on 9/11. The report said they had been placed on a watch list in Thailand in January 2000, but not on a U.S. list until August 2001.
Prosecutors argue that Moussaoui, a French citizen, thwarted a prime opportunity to track down the 9/11 hijackers and possibly unravel the plot when he was arrested in August 2001 on immigration violations and lied to the FBI about his al-Qaida membership and plans to hijack a plane.
Had Moussaoui confessed, the FBI could have pursued leads that would have led them to most of the hijackers, government witnesses have testified.
To win the death penalty, prosecutors must first prove that Moussaoui’s actions _ specifically, his lies _ were directly responsible for at least one death on Sept. 11.
If they fail, Moussaoui would get life in prison.
Moussaoui pleaded guilty in April to conspiring with al-Qaida to hijack planes and other crimes, but he has denied any role in 9/11. He says he was training for a possible future attack on the White House.
Two things: first, Moussaoui has just guaranteed himself the death penalty by admitting he knew of the 911 attacks and misled investigators (unless his defense can convince a jury this admission is proof he is insane); and second, that intelligence wall we built was one of the most ill-conceived bits of policy ever instituted by this country. Not surprisingly, it grew out of the idea that we are more prone to abuse our own power than others are to use our self-imposed restrictions against us.
Thankfully, that particular elitist intellectual flower has been exposed for the stinkweed it was—but not before a number of attacks, and many Americans, were slaughtered by a ruthless enemy who is bent on using our own laws (and the gray areas between them) against us.
Former FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley insists (full disclosure: she is running for a Democratic seat for Minnesota’s 6th congressional District) that the FISA process didn’t prevent the intelligence community from getting at Moussaoui’s laptop in time to perhaps unravel the 911 plot (an edited version of her memo to Director Mueller can be found here); but for whatever reason, her memo and subsequent testimony is often cited as one of the reasons the warrantless NSA program authorized by the President was (“officially”) born.
Bottom line: If Moussaoui’s testimony tells us anything, it is that the enemy within is real and, as they’ve shown, they are not to be dismissed lightly. True believers never should be. And despite what civil liberties absolutists would have you believe, the real threat to our freedoms come not from keeping jihadists penned up in Gitmo or “illegally” listening to their calls from overseas, but rather from refusing to acknowledge the enemies’ own strategies, and from working to block effective countermeasures, often by using hyperbolic and disingenuous rhetoric to drive public opinion (see, eg: “domestic wiretapping;” “propaganda”).
****
More from STACLU, Dread Pundit Bluto, Opinipundit, and Confederate Yankee
And Allah notes:
The CNN reporter can’t believe what she just heard in the courtroom. The guy took the stand and utterly destroyed his own defense.
Edgeworth: “I… object to the witness’s talkativeness!”
h
Not his failure to confess, but his lies and misdirections.
I’m sure he makes one hell of a credible witness.
Let’s see if the GOP can get an approval bump from people getting reminded of the dangerous world we live in.
Knee-jerk opposition to the Patriot Act is a good litmus test of anti-Americanism.
A little snark, a little not:
1. That’s an awful long quote to be considered “fair use” of the copyright laws of these here United States. (Granted, of course, there may be considerations at play of which I’m not aware; for all I know, you got some kinda arrangement with Breitbart.)
2. Agreed that the death penalty is virtually a certainty now.
3. Agreed that the wall between intelligence and law enforcement needs to be eliminated.
4. Disagree, however, with the assumption that Moussari is tellin the truth or that his own view of his role in 9-11 should drive policy. The fact that the guys evil nuts does not mean that he’s not nuts.
5. Accordingly, see no basis for the following conclusion:
Sorry for the typos, above.
And what about say the Almighty’s miracles you unbelieving secular fool?
I say Moussaoui is kind of a Latter Day Buddha figure unjustly crucified by Neocon Cabalists.
I mean like after all their high priests killed scapegoats for a living…
I can definitely see this guy having reached the conclusion that he prefers martyrdom to life in prison & has simply chosen to go about securing said martyrdom the most effective way he could conceive.
Regardless, the guy’s gonna fry, and that brings a smile to my face.
If he thinks the U.S. death penalty is “securing said martyrdom the most effective way he could conceive” he doesn’t know a whole lot about our court system, does he?
Rule of Actus – if he says he didn’t do anything wrong or make any plans, we have to believe him. If he says he did help the plot we have to discount that as unbelievable, y’know, coming from him.
Very good, you get a nice, shiny “D” in Crim Law. Go to the back of the room. Way to the back.
Obviously Ms. CNN still doesn’t understand what these guys are all about.
I don’t think that was Beck’s point. (It certainly wasn’t mine.)
Just a thought here, could be wrong, but I think that if the Major was snarking at you, he’d have called it the “Rule of Von”.
Just maybe.
My point, clarrified: I’m disinclined to believe a word that comes out of his mouth regardless of what he’s saying. I’m inclined to believe hard, factual evidence.
To determine his motives for suddenly dropping a stunning, damning, and unexpected confession, simply look to the probably outcome of his action and then attempt to determine why he would desire such an outcome.
That made me laugh aloud.
That’s what credibility generally means right? Believe what we like?
I couldn’t agree more.
I also have to agree with Beck’s statement;
However, whether Moussaoui is lying to get out of his life sentence, or telling the truth, as explosive as it is(pardon the play on words), do you think that the MSM is going to give this any but the most minimal coverage?
I think that it’s a safe prediction that Cheyneys hotel preferences, ‘imminent’ civil war in Iraq and the ‘rising discontent’ with republicans mantras will continue unabated. This story will sink like a stone and be forgotten in the ever continuing bad news cycle for this administration.
The sad part is that I think the lessons for the ‘next time’ will be real censorship since the media can not be trusted to even be impartial.
Is it possible that his admission is more strategic than martyrdom? Is this the first time that a captured AQ operative has professed his guilt? I have to wonder if his public words are meant to set other events into motion.
I don’t want to be a member of the tin-foil-hat-brigade, but this group was sophisticated enough to pull off the largest terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
Sir:
I am not sure that Moussaoui’s admissions will make his execution much more likely. From what I have read, his defence is based on two points…non-involvement in the planning (perhaps this has now gone out the window) and the right to remain silent about his knowledge when questioned by investigators.
As we all know from watching Dragnet, FBI, Miami Vice, CSI and any other police drama over the last 30 years, anyone under arrest has a constitutional right to remain silent. As Efrem Zimbalist Jr. used to say “You have the right to remain silent. If you choose to speak anything you say and and will be used against you in a court of law.” In the present case, the government’s argument seems to attach an addendum to the effect “If you choose to exercise your right to silence, you may be executed for doing so.”
The Judge in the case has already commented that she is unaware of any case in which a convicted person has been executed on the basis of failing to volunteer information in their possession. She has also hinted that she is unaware of any legal obligation to do so.
My point is not that I have any use for Moussaoui. My point is the importance of the rule of law. It just seems that there are some live issues that must be resolved before Moussaoui can be executed, and none of them have much to do with whether he in fact knew what was going to happen on 11 Sept. 2001.
Its on CNN’s front page right now.
Good point, Phil. My bad.
Like exploiting our freedoms in order to kill us.
Recall in all this fascinating reportage that
the press was screaming weeks ago how silly the prosecution was.
Imagine they yelled: trying to prove that he failed to tell the FBI about 9/11 and thus the jury will decide for a death sentence.
Imagine they laughed: this will never fly and how the judge lambasted the prosecutors for their bad acts.
Imagine they scoffed: what a waste of four years of time and expense.
Prosecutors, good ones, don’t go to court for silly reasons, they go to win cases with full backup and all nuances and angles carefully thought out – especially in this case.
Thank you, actus. You have proven to be more ideologically driven than logically. Massoui made a damning statement against interest, and if you think his lawyers never warned him about the evidentiary value of that, then you are not worthy of taking a bar exam. It condemns him. That is the end of it.
Good-night, child acutus. You haven’t the wit in your whole body to be worth reading here again. Ass.
How an inoffensive (except maybe for himself as Actus rightly said) unstable Moroccan prole eager to get his proverbial 5 minutes of glory through the grandiloquent use of outlandish statements and other “jihadist verbiages†can attract the attention of so many “conservative†minds shows the extent to which conservatism, once the ideological home our nation’s virile and rational minds, has become of sub-ideology of sensationalist pussies and other Neocon carpetbaggers…
Go find your Evidence Nutshell or your Black’s Law Dictionary. Gawd help me – I think I’ll go eat my IL ARDC card now…
Blaise sez:
Not true. If he was part of a conspiracy to commit murder, and those conspirators did indeed commit murder, then he is culpable for murder and eligible for the death penalty.
Moussaoui realizes that there are no virgins at ATX Florence. This is a win/win situation, where the desires of both parties will be satisfied.
Vega is having a bad thread so far – two posts and no reaction yet? Whoops, I guess I make it reaction number 1, darn it.
Vic, baby!
WE LOVE THE DEATH PENALTY!!!!
It’s like Christmas for us, or Eid, or something.
Just out of curiousity, what elevated stations in life and enlightenment had the 19 sucessful hijackers achieved, Dr Vic?
I’m not sure he’s all that credible a witness, but if he makes a statement under oath we have no choice but to take him at his word, in my opinion. Crazy is not the same as stupid, so presumably he understands the consequences of his actions.
My contrarian side says “Fuck it. If he truly wants the death penalty as martyrdom, the least we could do is give him life without parole.”
Wish I had thought of that one.
Don’t you know yet that the way you deal with Vic Torino and actus (in the back seat) is to ignore them. Neither adds anything at any time to any discussion on any topic. Maybe we’ll get fortunate and they will go away.
There are a couple things worth remembering while we play games over whether to believe him or not.
1) He has admitted to a membership in Al Quada which has been corroborated by other sources.
2) He was in the country taking flying lessons prior to 9/11.
3) Some of his teachers thought it odd that he was not particularly interested in learning how to land.
It’s not a logical slam dunk, but it does tend to give more credence to his admission today.
makes a whole lotta sense.
I’m sure htey did. All I said was this guy is a very credible witness. C’mmon: him and richard reid! How can you not believe that?
Whats going on here is that he needs to be more than just a member of the conspiracy to get the death sentence.
With this admission, pull him out of the criminal justice system, declare him a combatant out of uniform and, in accordance with the Geneva Convention, shoot him.
Nah, don’t execute him. Let him spend the rest of his miserable life as a community jizz-rag in stir.
I’m glad that the prosecutor asked him also if a Muslim was permitted to lie at time, and M agreed, to tell a little white lie and for jihad. (Oh, yeah, and for jihad!) If we can just stave off more attacks for another year or two, Americans will have achieved a working knowledge of jihad, before it is too late.
Is Actus saying Zacarias Moussaoui isn’t a very credible witness?
So this means that flight 93 was headed for the Congress, but ended up in a field in Pennsylvania.
Sounds like part of a Civil War story line .. he was headed for DC but was planted in PA.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, I seem to recall that the Congress took it’s good old time evacuating the building. Each member should remember that UBL was coming for them, the D’s and the R’s and most importantly the I’s .. for the I’s have it.
Stop agreeing with me Actus, or the next thing you know you’ll become all reasonable and shit.
Here’s a chance to hone your chops, future counselor. Prove it.
Why can’t both things be threats?
The article says this:
Is that enough for you?
They can be, conceptually.
Except that I don’t believe either Gitmo or the NSA program as they are being run threaten our civil liberties in any way, whereas the hyperbolic rhetoric and misinformation spread about both makes it more difficult to keep the country safe.
His confession that he was planning to commit an act of agression means he was a Jihadist soldier, out of uniform. Comply with the Geneva Convention and shoot him.
he wasn’t going to hijack a fifth plane, he was the fifth hijacker on one of the four teams.
which makes sense.
Jeff, i personally think it was the peace dividend and Clinton’s war on that nasty messy HUMINT that contributed more than anything to our not knowing about 911.
This is just Moussaoui spitting in our face again. He’s probably pretty clear on the finer points of his defense as noted by blaise and others. He is basically saying, “I knew it was going to happen and I didn’t stop it and the corrupt morality of your legal system is insufficient to punish me.” He is scoring points in the information war by showing us we are powerless to even punish those guilty of horrible crimes against us.
I’ll leave it to the lawyers in the group to worry over whether or not he committed a “crime” by remaining silent, but those of us with a lick of common sense know he deserves the death penalty.
How embarassing that our society will have to rely on the ethics of his future inmates to deliver justice to a creep like this.
Shinji —
Certainly didn’t help—particularly the war on HUMINT. So I’ll stipulate and add this to my earlier assertion. But our intel problems go back beyond the Clinton years, I think you’d agree.
Dang it, that’s the fifteenth irony meter that’s shorted out on me in the last three months.
actus sez:
No, not at all. The death penalty is on the table, and I didn’t put it there.
The jury will be instructed to consider imposing it.
If that’s the sum of your defense, he’s a dead man walking.
Got any more?
My defense? what are you talking about? All I said was they need to prove more than conspiracy. They need to prove overt acts which caused deaths. That’s what the article says.
If there was a proposed fifth plane, I imagine AQ took a look at the prospective jihadis like Richard Reid and bad student pilot Moose and decided to call it off. It’s comforting to know that he was the best they could come up with at the time.
Who is the 20th hijacker anyway?
Pay attention! The man is NOT a criminal. He is a beligerant, out of uniform. Drumhead court martial, execution. All proper and in accordance with U.S. and International law.
This idiocy of trying to make a criminal of a soldier has to stop before it gets us all killed.
Geez, actuse. I thought you wanted to be a lawyer!
So all they need to do is hand the article to the jury, and he lives, then? Any other cases you think we can wrap up with a news piece? Assuming that the prosecution has nothing to say…
Sigh.
Too late, Walter. We’re dealing with people so far from reality they literally have no other concepts to work with.
When they tell you they’re “reality-based”, recall that all the forces in Iraq belong to Central Command, which is based in Florida.
Regards,
Ric
All I could add would be an echo of Walter. Except the shooting part. Hang him. We wouldn’t give the Nazis that honor, we bloody well shouldn’t give it to him.
How many other cases does his Honor know about where witholding information caused 3000 deaths?
(lefties and Charlie Sheen: FDR and Pearl Harbor doesn’t count)
Evidence, expert testimony and a confession.
Sorry, the case seems weak to me… (/sarc)
What are you talking about? The entire case is them trying to show his actions caused deaths.
Watch how this plays out, and keep in mind my post from the other night.
This is a man who wants to kill Americans, and considers himself perfectly justified in doing so.
We are putting him on trial as a criminal. We (the prosecution at least) mean to show that he did something bad, and convict him of same so we can punish him.
He has used that trial as a venue for an impassioned speech, bragging that he has killed Americans, intended to kill more, and has in general fulfilled the requirements laid upon him by his faith and its leaders. We can now expect that this speech will be publicized far and wide, and used to inspire further killers of Americans to better efforts. Here is how a soldier of the Faith behaves! He casts his determination in the very face of the kangaroo court that seeks to call him evil!
If we execute him, slow or fast, he goes to Paradise and is rewarded, and his death will be trumpeted in every Islamist mosque as the triumph of a faithful jihadist. It is, however, virtually certain that we won’t execute him. Actus and his cohorts are, and will be, actively searching for ways to frustrate that intent. Under U.S. criminal law it is almost inevitable that some grounds for “clemency” will be found.
If we don’t execute him, but put him away in a typical American prison—air conditioned, with linen service and regular meals—he will make multiple speeches from his imprisonment, fiercely urging his stay-at-home fellows to kill Americans. The speeches, being “newsworthy”, will be carried on every newsmedia channel. The fact that his jailers cater to his religious preferences—halal meals, access to an imam, a Koran by his side—will be advertised as being because the Americans are afraid of Allah and do not care to offend His soldiers.
The grounds for not executing him will be cited as further evidence that we are so weak and convoluted that we are easy meat for determined attackers.
So, at most, we get a bit of atavistic revenge against a single man, at the expense of inspiring many others to emulate him. At worst we don’t even get the revenge, but the rest of it comes in full force.
And you want to catch bin Laden? What you’re watching is the trailer to that flick.
Regards,
Ric
What the hell are you talking about, actus?
The guy has been found guilty of being involved in 9-11. He’s a terrorist. We understand that the pointy heads have to line everything up, in alphabetical order, to the six decimal place of precision.
But hey, Moussaoui is as guilty of murder as Bin Laden is. Probably more, as UBL never goes hunting on his own, he’s just the mule, the go-to-guy, the financier; he don’t do operations.
Drop the BS. He isn’t sitting in the chair yet, so the case for the death penalty isn’t over. Well, Captain Obvious, fuck off. Of course, you twit, we still have work to do to give him a 100,000 volt mohawk.
Of course, by fucking definition of being in a terrorist cell, you are a goat-philandering murderer. So what is the point in splitting hairs, actus? Do you want to see him, co-murderer of 3000 Americans, would-be murderer of 80,000+, walk?
Right. he plead to that conspiracy.
He’s not going to walk. We’re only talking about hte penalty. And in order for deaht, he has to have caused the death.
Actus, you moron. Can you imagine what would have happened if this lunatic had succeeded in destroying the White House? Oh, wait, I can imagine it. You would have wanted to make sure he had a good defense lawyer for his trial.
Just one caveat: WHAT GENIUS DECIDED THAT JERKWEED MOUSSAUI CAN COUNT TO FIVE???????
Are we going to kneecap him?
No. We’re going to put him in a special cell in one of the “country club” white-collar prisons, with hot and cold running imams and his own, private, halal-certified kitchen and cook. The “special” part will be the adjacent, full-featured television studio.
Regards,
Ric
This is what happens when you treat war like crime. The man is an out of uniform soldier.
He’d be dead. Along with richard reid. Riiiight.
Oh, i agree.
the old guyz at work told me the sovs usta walk thru our defense plants with sticky tape on their shoes during the carter admin, picking up fabrication samples.
the thing the dems absolutely don’t get, is that there are really people out there that
Jimmy “buy-the-world-a-coke” carter and Bill “peace dividend” Clinton never got it either.
Fan quibble! What Zoe said was,
You got the order wrong, Nishi. The Fireflyjehadin will not tolerate such heresy!
I’m emphatically not a lawyer, but… Walter, if we treat Moussaui as a soldier subject to the Geneva Conventions, doesn’t that cause us some problems with dealing with al Qaeda prisoners elsewhere? I’m fine with not applying Geneva to people who do not wear uniforms, hold ranks, or serve in a military hierarchy, and who do target civilians, shelter in and shoot from sanctuaries, and themselves eschew Geneva. But we’re (ISTM) sort of between a rock and a hard place when it comes to dealing with one like this: criminal justice doesn’t seem, well, sufficiently just, and military-in-wartime customs, applied to one (real or potential) combatant, might set a bad precedent for handling all the rest.
I eagerly await enlightenment.
Problem is that Reid, didn’t try to come into the country until October; remember he was detained at
the Paris airport, and let on the next day; where he was supposed to blow up that plane. He was at
the Finsbury Park Mosque, along with Moussaoi, along with many others; Best bet is still Mohammed
Al Quahtani, who was planning to come in through
Orlando Air Port till an alert customs official blocked his path. Seems to be Moussaoi, is playing the Agca card,like the Pope’s attempted assassin acting crazy to disguise the sponsoring organization’s real plans for him. One of the mysteries of the world is how Rowley, the former briefer on the Cunanan case (boy, that was a screwup) ever became an authority on intelligence protocols, i’ll never know.
I can’t believe we’re losing to these guys…
TW: business. As in, since I fly a lot on business, I think we should be allowed to publicly tourture Richard Reid, no matter what my religion might say about it. Our doctors should keep him alive while travellers waiting in the security line at the airport get to stab him with toothpicks and beat him with shoes. He should get moved to a different airport every day and be forced to man the USAir customer service counter. Moussy? Lock him up, Reid, hurt him. Hurt him badly.
mcgeehee, apolos, but at least i got the sentiment right.
Tom Fox found out the truth of that the hard way.
This thread seems to have morphed into a discussion of whether or not the Rule of Law is a handicap in the War on Terror.
That’s Ric, faithfully upholding the theory under which it is necessary for the United States not just to catch the bad guys, but also to demonstrate a level of violence sufficient to deter future bad guys. Ric doesn’t care if the letter of the law (as Actus argues) says that M’s crimes (as described in the indictment) aren’t legally punishable by death.
Personally, I’m of the belief that whether we kill M or let him live out his life in prison won’t make a shred of difference to any Al Qaeda recruiters; the list of alleged American crimes is so long from their point of view that M’s fate is irrelevant, and other alleged crimes will do just as well to stir up anti-American hatred.
But more to the point, M’s case is, I think, an excellent advertisement for the importance of the rule of law. Let’s imagine that M was imprisoned in Gitmo, tried and convicted in a secret court, and executed by firing squad in a manner befitting a captured soldier. Let’s imagine that he had no recourse to defense, no public trial, etc.
What would be lost is this: M would never have had the opportunity to go on the witness stand and create the unmatched public record of the threat we face from Al Qaeda and its ideology. He’s put a face on the enemy and made a record, unimpeachable, of the motivations, goals, and tactics. He’s the real deal, and all of America got to see it.
But that same record can and should be used as a wake-up call to clarify understanding and inspire opposition to this hateful agenda.
So, since we spend so much time here discussing the importance of morale and the information war, it’s worth noting that M’s presence in an open court of law gave us a valuable public record [i.e. Al Qaeda really is as bad as all that] that would have been completely lost had he been treated as an enemy combatant.
It is also worth considering that the rule of law in action can have a positive effect in the information war. Remember that the people we’re trying to liberate—the Iraqis, the Middle EAst writ large—are people for whom totalitarianism, under which the law is meaningless, is the rule. Won’t we win some hearts and minds by playing by our own rules? By showing that even the most hateful criminal gets his day, and has his voice? By showing that in our system, unlike theirs, the violent powers of the state are tempered by the law?
What if one of the hijackers had said “screw it, I’m outa here” and had somehow parachuted out of the plane before his fellow jihadis piloted it into the World Trade Center? Would Actus be saying that sure, he pled guilty to being in the conspiracy, but he *personally* didn’t kill anyone, so no death penalty?
Jeebus.
Spamword “likely”. Yeah spamword, I believe you.
Not rule of Law, the rule of Lawyers.
There is a difference.
No death penalty for suicide bombers, unless they succeed!
I think there’s a good case his actions caused the deaths.
Give each captive a drumhead court martial. If he was a beligerant and out of uniform, execute him. At the very least, have the trial and sentence as soon as possible, then any delay in execution can be gravy.
There seems to be some confusion here about the function of a death penalty phase, as opposed to the trial phase. First of all, under federal law, if you enter into a conspiracy and a crime is foreseeable as the outcome of that conspiracy, and a co-conspirator commits that crime, you can be found guilty even though you didn’t actually do the crime or even commit ANY overt acts. This is called the Pinkerton theory, after the Supreme Court case of the same name, and the prosecutor can ask for a “Pinkerton charge” to the jury, which would essentially say that “If you find that the defendant was a member of the conspiracy and that the crime was foreseeable, then you may find him guilty of the crime” committed by his co-conspirators, etc. (Overt acts, BTW, don’t have to be a big deal in themselves; they can be something like making a phone call, or buying duct tape, or laying your finger next to your nose—it doesn’t have to be an act that
“causes” the crime in the common conversational sense of the word “cause.”) HOWEVER, none of that applies here, because of course Moussaoui has already pleaded guilty to the conspiracy, which in this case (and in most federal cases) makes him subject to the penalties of the underlying federal crimes. The question of whether or not to apply the death penalty therefore doesn’t really hinge on whether he committed any overt acts or in fact caused any deaths; the passage in the news article saying that the prosecutors have to prove such things doesn’t make any sense because he’s already guilty of the crimes, so I suspect it’s just plain dumbness on the part of reporters. (A lot of my cases when I was a federal prosecutor were reported in the NYC papers, and they usually got the facts wrong to an amazing extent. Most accurate was the NY Post; worst by far was the Times.) What the prosecution tries to show in the DP phase is that M is—for lack of a better word—morally culpable enough to deserve the maximum penalty. (Think about a common murder case. Not all of them get the DP. Whether or not they do depends on the aggravating and/or mitigating factors that can be adduced by the prosecution and the defense, respectively. Basically, evidence of particular depravity, like torture, as an aggravating factor; or the absence of such as a mitigating factor. In the Okla. City bombing case, McVeigh got the DP but Nichols didn’t, not because they were convicted of crimes carrying different penalties—they weren’t—but because the jury in the penalty phase apparently found Nichols less egregious.) Moussaoui is eligible for the DP without any further proof of his acts, because he’s pleaded guilty to crimes that carry the DP. Whether or not he gets it depends on, to put it at its most basic, how awful the jury finds him.
In addition, I’ll add that a defendant pleading guilty has to allocute to the facts that consitute his offense on the record, before a judge can accept his guilty. So Moussaoui has already confessed, as part of his plea, to conduct sufficient to warrant the death penalty. As I stated above, whether he gets it or not is a different question.
BTW, I doubt if his “failure to confess” is at issue. There’s an actual criminal statue called “misprision of a felony,” and it involves actively hiding a crime. M most likely made statements to law enforcement that could be interpreted as actively hiding the crime, as opposed to just refusing to say anything, and he really doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who just would keep his mouth shut. He wasn’t charged with misprision, as far as I know, but that’s the essential legal analysis. If the jury finds that M actively hid a crime, and the crime that he actively hid was 9/11, well, that’s bad for him.
You are talking about criminal law. Not applicable here. The deeper we get into this war, the more obvious it becomes.
Am I the only guy who feels sorry for Moussaoui? He’s like the 5th Beatle.
Kinda like the kid observing a painting of Christians being fed to the lions. His mother noticed tears starting to run. “What are you crying for?” “That lion over there doesn’t have a Christian.”