March 28 NORTH CAROLINA: Bad interaction: doctors and executions It may turn out, surprisingly, that the medical profession holds the key to ending this country's longstanding and dishonorable link to other nations that continue to shackle and kill some offenders. Capital punishment is horrifying and ineffective, and it's also beneath the international stature of the United States. Do we want to be at the same moral latitude as Libya, Iran and Iraq? Only 2 fully democratic and developed countries in the world -- the United States and Japan -- still employ capital punishment. And executions are distasteful in any number of ways, even to those who carry them out. A recent New York Times article covered the emotional damage done to those who participate and the importance of "moral disengagement" for them. The prison system tries mightily to remove individual culpability from correction officers who handle the killing, but it's to no ultimate success. Here's what that means: each aspect of an execution is handled by different people. Does the correctional officer who straps down the condemned man's left arm actually kill him? What about the officer who shackles his feet for the walk to the gurney? Or the one who puts the needles in his veins, or the ones who actually depress the syringes? Which of these men actually kills the prisoner? Exactly -- it's impossible to say. It also allows these participants in the deaths to rationalize away their roles: "Hey, I only bought the chemicals; I didn't kill him." In a cockeyed way, this makes sense in our system, in which "the people" convict and then carry out the execution. If no one person can be pinned down, then all of us are the executioners. Well, I say, that's not acceptable -- I want no killing done in my name. This is a system that allows the participants, from the correction officer to the governor, to hide behind the procedure and disclaim the fact of having executed the prisoner. If capital punishment is good for our country, then why sanitize it to the extent it has been? If Gov. Mike Easley really believes in this, let him hand a loaded firearm to a lone shooter, who would put a bullet into the back of the neck of a bound, kneeling man. That's the way China has done it, and it was done in public, too. At least that system has the appearance of deterring other capital crimes. And there would be no question of what the prisoner was going through, unlike the issues recently raised by the use of the lethal injection. With cruder forms of execution -- gassing, shooting, electrocuting -- there is little question of the mechanism and cause of death. But lethal injection has raised some troubling issues, particularly on the question of whether the condemned is suffering pain during the course of dying. This is where the physicians might help spell the end of capital punishment. In North Carolina, state law requires executions to be attended by doctors, who certify the death. But in doing so, they violate ethical guidelines of the profession. In California, an execution was actually called off because the prison system could not come up with any physicians -- anesthesiologists in this case -- to monitor the death of Michael Morales. The problem is whether the amounts and sequence of chemicals render the prisoner truly senseless, so that he does not suffer severe pain during the actual process of dying. Autopsies have found that in a number of cases, the amounts of chemicals in the body were not sufficient to induce this degree of unconsciousness and the prisoner, while motionless, would be in great pain. If the prison system were genuinely concerned with administering a painless death -- the goal, after all, of lethal injection -- there is a way to achieve it. A "bispectral index" monitor can be used to assess, by analyzing an electroencephalogram, the depth of unconsciousness. Increasingly common in surgery, the bispectral index could guide the administration of the fatal chemicals to ensure that enough are used. Of course the correctional system knows these monitors exist -- their use was approved in 1996 -- but they do not employ them. And why not? I suspect their use would begin to bridge in a perverse and uncomfortable way the distance between the operating room and the death chamber and, in turn, the gap between physician and executioner. Doctors in California were absolutely right to refuse to participate, and the same is true for doctors in North Carolina. They must work to increase -- not shrink -- the gulf between them and capital punishment. With physicians' refusals to have anything to do with executions, the death penalty will become harder to carry out. But more than that, those refusals will call further attention to the future of capital punishment and encourage all the states, and the United States, to join the majority of countries worldwide that ban execution as a means of punishment. (source: News & Observer - Bob Kochersberger teaches journalism at N.C. State University) CALLIFORNIA: 'I'm a Killer,' Jurors Hear----Prosecutors play tape of Wayne Adam Ford, on trial in the deaths of 4 women across the state. A year after the limbless torso washed ashore in a slough near Eureka, the Humboldt County Sheriff's Department's lead investigator still had little to go on. The victim's identity remained a mystery, and every lead about the slaying proved fruitless. That is, until November 1998, when Wayne Adam Ford walked into the Humboldt County sheriff's station with a severed breast in a plastic bag and confessed to killing that woman and three others, Det. Juan Freeman testified in San Bernardino Superior Court on Monday. While Freeman was on the stand, prosecutors played a tape-recording of Ford's statement to the detective. "I'm a killer," Ford said. "I figure I'm probably gonna die. Well, which is what I want, but I'm not gonna kill myself." Ford, a former truck driver, is on trial for the killings of the 4 women - all prostitutes or hitchhikers - throughout California in 1997 and 1998. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty on 4 counts of 1st-degree murder, while the defense is trying for lesser charges of 2nd-degree murder or manslaughter. Ford, in a dark navy suit, leafed through a transcript of his confession. Freeman described Ford as soft-spoken and depressed yet cooperative during the interviews, which spanned 2 days. "His speaking was flat," Freeman testified. "He would mostly look down at the ground as he spoke." Although his voice barely rose above a whisper on the recording, Ford could be heard sobbing and crying at intervals. On the tape, he said he used a hunting knife and razor to decapitate the still unidentified victim. Ford stored the woman's legs in a freezer, buried her head and arms in a sandbar and hid her thighs under leaves near his campsite, according to prosecutors. "I had to make her small so she would fit better," Ford said. "I cut her head off. Her arms, her legs." Although Ford, 44, talked frankly with investigators on the tape, he said his mind clouded up whenever he was asked to provide specifics about each killing. "Sometimes I can concentrate and sometimes I can sit for hours and not, just, nothing happens," Ford said in the recording. Freeman asked Ford several times if he wanted an attorney during the questioning. After pondering the question, Ford declined, saying he wanted to help authorities. "I know that I'm risking a lot by doing what I'm doing without an attorney," Ford said on the recording. "A lot of [the] advantage that I might have to weasel out of something in some way, shape or form." The identified victims are Tina Renee Gibbs, 26, of Las Vegas; Lanett Deyon White, 25, of Fontana; and Patricia Anne Tamez, 29, of Hesperia. In his opening statement two weeks ago, Deputy Public Defender Joseph D. Canty told the jury Ford turned himself in because he was contrite and wanted the killings to end. The trial continued Monday after a 1-week halt that San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Michael Smith attributed to "unexpected developments." Attorneys said they were barred from speaking on the issue. (source: Los Angeles Times) USA: Patriot Act's fast-tracking of death penalty cases draws criticism Slipped into the thick binding of the newly authorized Patriot Act is a provision designed to speed death penalty appeals. The act, signed into law this month, allows states to ask the U.S. attorney general for so-called fast-track reviews of federal habeas corpus petitions - the last appeal of a death row inmate. Previously federal judges made that determination, which is based on whether a state's court-appointed attorneys in death penalty appeals are able to handle them. No state had qualified for the fast-track review, but that could change under the new law. A fast-track review limits the amount of time a prisoner has to appeal and the subject matter of the appeal. "This is very troubling," said Allen Lichtenstein, local attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's an attempt by certain elements of government to eviscerate the very checks and balances that are in place to guard us against the abuses of government. "Essentially it's an attack against the Bill of Rights." Conservative groups, long critical of the length of time it takes for appeals to wind through the system, have championed fast-track appeals. "If the provision holds up, it should fix the problem," said Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the nonprofit California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm dedicated to crime victims' rights. Scheidegger said it's not unheard of for a death penalty case to take a decade to get through the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco. He figures fast-track reviews would cut that down to 3 to 4 years. But critics say death penalty cases are complex and can't be rushed through the system. "Proper review is not particularly burdensome, so there is no real need for this," Lichtenstein said. "It's like they're saying we don't need judges, we don't want any review at all." Michael Pescetta, the federal public defender for Nevada, said the new system is "unconstitutional because it takes a judicial determination and turns it over to the attorney general." "They want to hurry up things at the expense of justice," he said. Pescetta, whose office handles federal death penalty appeals, said he thinks the new law will be held up by "an enormous amount of litigation." Conrad Hafen, chief of the Nevada attorney general's criminal division, wouldn't speculate on the impact of the new system but indicated that the state will likely apply to be placed on the fast-track list. He noted that the law allows an appeal of the U.S. attorney general's decisions to the appellate court in Washington. "The D.C. court certainly hasn't been a pro-prosecution court over the years and they have been more than favorable to defendants and petitioners," he said. The appellate court's decision could be appealed to the Supreme Court. Pescetta, though, said the law takes the appeal out of the hands of the judges in the 9th Circuit, "who see Nevada cases on a regular basis and already recognize the errors occurring here are really terrible." The key in a fast-track authorization is whether a state's requirements for a court-appointed attorney are stringent enough. The law looks not only at the lawyer's experience but also at the resources the attorney is given to conduct an appeal. Pescetta scoffed at Nevada's requirements, saying, "All someone really needs is a bar card to be allowed to handle these cases. "To the extent the courts are going to examine the capital post-conviction system in Nevada, they are going to find it just doesn't qualify to meet the statute," he said. Pescetta said Nevada's guidelines have created a situation in which court appointed defense attorneys "fail to hire an investigator to look beyond the record of a case and don't even ask for discovery." He said by the time his office receives a case - after a prisoner's state appeal has been exhausted - many issues that should have been raised to the Nevada Supreme Court haven't been. If Nevada's system is approved, "our bad situation is only destined to become worse," Pescetta said. There are 82 death row inmates in Nevada. (source: Las Vegas Sun) ******************* Execute Moussaoui? EVEN IF HE WAS SUPPOSED TO fly a plane into the White House on the evil morning of Sept. 11, as he testified in court Monday, Zacarias Moussaoui should not be executed. Even if he knew enough, sitting in jail on immigration charges, to have stopped the slaughter at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field, killing the 20th hijacker is actually a worse idea than executing most other murderers on death row. Monday's dramatic testimony marked the first time Moussaoui has spoken publicly since that world-changing day when 19 hijackers used four planes to kill nearly 3,000 people in the worst attack on the continental United States. Hearing his voice was like picking a scab of a wound that will never heal. And it begs a series of what-ifs: What if the FBI had let its man in Minneapolis seek search warrants based on the French Muslim's curious desire for jumbo-jet training and his professed hatred for the U.S.? What if we could hear all of the witnesses testify, instead of suffering from their silence because a federal lawyer improperly coached many of them through their expected cross-examination? The 19 hijackers are dead. But there is still Moussaoui. He knew. He helped. Shouldn't he die? No, he should not. Many committed opponents of the death penalty want to carve out exceptions for mass murderers or those who attack or betray the nation writ large, such as Timothy McVeigh. But if you believe, as does this page, that the death penalty debases our society, the principle becomes all the more important when it is most tempting to ignore. But for those who don't share that conviction, there are some more practical arguments. Would-be suicide jihadists want to die in their struggle against us in the deluded belief that God will reward their murderous cowardice. Once they are in our custody, they lose the power to achieve that goal. Capital punishment gives them the martyrdom they crave, making them symbols of sacrifice to would-be followers rather than powerless, humiliated prisoners passing the decades alone and increasingly forgotten in a cell. More important, if Moussaoui is indeed an important cog in a broad conspiracy, then he certainly has information that could potentially be useful both in further Sept. 11 investigations and in our fight against Al Qaeda, whether now or in 10 years. We may or may not get this information from him if he lives, although life in prison is a very long time. But we will certainly not get it from him if he dies. And killing him would do nothing to stop future attacks or alleviate the loss of the past. That's the hard thing about the death penalty: The heart screams for retribution, but it is never enough. It is vengeance devoid of benefit. (source: Editorial, Los Angeles Times) *************************** Talking Himself To Death Al Qaeda terror conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui proved Monday that he is a far better suicide witness than suicide pilot. Having failed miserably at training to fly a plane into the White House in 2001, the capital defendant was far defter with his words in 2006, offering jurors startling testimony that makes it more likely - but by no means certain - that he will soon be sentenced to death. Moussaoui, the man who likes to shout every time he is led out of court, was calm and measured and articulate on the witness stand. He answered almost every question asked of him by both prosecutors and defense attorneys and on several occasions offered more information, more incriminating evidence, than he was asked to give. There were no outbursts and Moussaoui even got some in-court laughs when he sardonically answered one particularly inane question. He was a helpful witness, in other words, a courteous one, the kind you dream about having as a defense attorney in a capital case. Only it was Moussaoui's attorneys, and not prosecutors, whose life work may have been shattered in the span of a few hours in court. That's because Moussaoui gravely undermined a key part of the defense when he told jurors that he was part of the 9-11 plot and not part of a subsequent plan to fly planes into buildings. He also linked himself to the actual hijackers in a way that no other witness had done before and, for good measure, implicated the so-called "shoe bomber," Richard Reid, into a "Who's-Who of Terrorists" scheme that would have see the White House destroyed. All of this is different from what Moussaoui had previously said about his terror role. And all of it helps prosecutors establish vital elements in their legal case for the death penalty. Before Moussaoui took the witness stand and gently promised U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema that he would tell the truth - Moussaoui refused to raise his hand and swear an oath - he had told us in writing that he was part of a terror plot designed to unfold after 9-11, one in which he would have flown a plane into a prison in Colorado to try to free a Muslim cleric held there. But there was no mention of that now superseded story during his testimony Monday; no explanation as to why his story changed in such a dramatic (and dramatically incriminating) way. All jurors heard was Moussaoui, the confessed al Qaeda terrorist, matter-of-factly linking himself over and over again to the terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. Prosecutors could not have asked for a better witness at a better time. Their case crippled by mismanagement, bad luck, and a dearth of good facts and applicable law, the government entered these final few days of the first phase of Moussaoui's sentencing trial with no better than a 50-50 shot of attaining their goal. And the only reason the odds were that good for the feds before Moussaoui testified is the inherent nature of this case - a creepy terrorist on trial for the worst crime in American history in the shadow of the Pentagon. The feds had, in other words, nearly squandered the huge home-field advantage they once possessed in the case. But then came Moussaoui, who with great irony may have single-handedly saved the government he has proudly and loudly claimed to hate. If he truly wants to die as a martyr, and finally meet all those virgins supposedly waiting for him in Paradise, then surely he took several grand steps toward that goal when he boasted of his contact with Osama bin Laden and his foreknowledge of the attacks. He told jurors, for example, that he purchased a radio while in jail in Minnesota in August 2001 so he could follow the subsequent attack as it unfolded. And he said that while he didn't know every detail of the 9-11 plan he knew that the World Trade Center would again be a target. He talked about knives like the ones used to cut throats on those planes and of how "gorgeous" the sight of the Twin Towers falling was. And it wasn't just Moussaoui's words that linked him to 9-11. Prosecutors also were able to shrewdly and dramatically make a visual link between the defendant, the guy the feds have chosen to take the fall for the attacks, and the actual hijackers. They showed Moussaoui slides of the hijackers, one by one, and asked him to identify them. Moussaoui did, over and over again, with varying degrees of specificity. 15 out of 19 when last counted. And the import of the exercise was clear; he was one of them, and proudly so, and it must have cheered the feds to see and hear Moussaoui wax on about how he and one of the hijackers used to "joke" about things. It's no wonder that Moussaoui's attorneys had begged Judge Brinkema not to allow their client to testify. Still, Moussaoui's jaw-dropping performance - lawyers, historians and journalists will be talking about this day for decades to come - leaves open 2 fundamental questions which jurors ultimately must resolve. First, they will have to determine whether Moussaoui is now, finally, telling the truth (after such a long history of lies) or whether this is just another attempt to aggrandize his own stature in the antisocial registry of terrorists. Remember, there are plenty of intelligence officials, and now-captured al Qaeda leaders, who see Moussaoui as a terrorist-wannabe, a buffoon, a failure, a cheerleader who now wants desperately to be executed by America as a so-called martyr for jihad even though he wasn't clever or competent enough in 2001 to carry out his role as a terrorist. The defense now will have to pivot to emphasize this side of Moussaoui. Fortunately for them, at least, there is some material with which to work. Jurors now are learning (in the form of written summaries of statements) what Moussaoui's al Qaeda bosses thought of him - and I can virtually guarantee you that it will not necessarily synch up with what Moussaoui's own perceptions of his role in the terror network. So the case may come down to this-- which terrorists will jurors believe? The one in front of them in court who says he was part of the plot? Or the terrorist leaders captured abroad, the true masterminds of 9-11, who say that he was not? Indeed, before the day was out, jurors had heard the words of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the nuts-and-bolts planner of the horror of 9-11, whose summarized testimony indicated that Moussaoui was on al Qaedas "back burner" and designated for another wave of attacks after 9-11. And jurors will have to decide, too, whether Moussaoui isn't just a bit too eager to seal his own doom. You can bet that if the case goes much further defense counsel will tell jurors that recommending a death sentence for Moussaoui will be a gift to him rather than a punishment. Normally, that type of pap never flies with a jury. But there is little about this case that is normal. Don't give this creepy, kooky, slimly terrorist what he wants, the defense is likely to tell jurors, as it turns on its own witness the way he has turned on them for years in this case. And there was an element of farce to Moussaoui's testimony; as if he were delighted to subvert his own defense and confound his own tormentors. The other unanswered question is whether jurors will remember after this day of drama that they still must find beyond a reasonable doubt that Moussaoui's lies caused death on 9-11. In other words, Moussaoui's latest confessions, alone, are still not enough by law to make him eligible for the death penalty. Moussaoui may have wanted to be an actual hijacker, and today may be trying to talk his way into being considered as one under the law, but he was in jail on Sept.11, 2001, and nothing he can do or say changes that. Jurors still have to agree that the government would have thwarted the attack had Moussaoui said back in August 2001 what he is saying now. Jurors still have to believe that despite its gross negligence before the attacks that the feds would have taken seriously Moussaoui's story if it had been presented in time. In other words, the weakest part of the government's case remains so despite the fact that Moussaoui got yet another day in federal court and used it to help the very people who are trying to have him executed. Only in America would a guy like this get a trial like this. Only in America would prosecutors have come to court with such weak evidence and needed the defendant to bail them out. And only in the warped mind of a terrorist would it be a point of visible pride to voluntarily align oneself with some of the worst criminals the world has seen in a long, long time. Moussaoui did that today, mocking his own defense and perhaps the truth, and now it's up to his judge and jury to absorb the shock of what he said, and how he said it, so that he gets what the facts and law say he deserves - whatever that turns out to be. (source: CBS News - Attorney Andrew Cohen analyzes legal issues for CBS News and CBSNews.com.) ******************** 'Is that torture or is that justice?'----Famous nun, author encourages debate on death penalty With the eyes that a convicted murderer stared into as he died in the electric chair and the voice that counseled him to that point, Sister Helen Prejean charged an audience at Valparaiso University on Monday night to rethink the humanity of the death penalty. Prejean, author of the best-selling book "Dead Man Walking," mixed stories of personal experiences and passages of Christian scripture as she recounted her experiences as a spiritual adviser to death row inmates. "If I had seen the end of the road," she said of her 1st experience with death row prisoner Patrick Sonnier in 1982, "I couldn't have said yes to that." Rather than shy away, Prejean dove into the trenches of the debate. She spent time with the prisoners, she listened to the inconsolable rage and incomprehensible loss from the victims' families -- and she came to a realization. "There's more to the human person than that act," she said. "Is that torture or is that justice? Match suffering for suffering? How does this heal us as a society?" Before Prejean's talk in the vastness of the Chapel of the Resurrection, she had a more intimate question-and-answer session with students in the university's CORE program, a two-semester seminar required for new students. Her Pulitzer-nominated book is not part of the CORE curriculum, but the Oscar-winning movie of the same name is. So understandably, some of the questions revolved around the movie. Prejean gladly entertained the inquiries. She spoke admirably of Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, the Hollywood duo that starred in the film, and of their devotion to capturing the underlying emotions. They involved her in every scene and every line, she said. Along the way, Prejean sprinkled a few laugh-lines for her 18- and 19-year-old audience. "Susan has a question," Prejean recalled Robbins saying during one of their conversations. "Do all nuns have short hair? Does she have to cut her hair?" The talk delighted Mark Mackeben, a freshman from Sycamore, Ill., who has read the book and seen the movie. "There are only so many ways to learn things. You see it and you read it, but then really when you're talking to somebody -- and even hearing them speak -- you can learn a lot more," he said. Prejean's presence and her demeanor left freshman Emily Cullar pleasantly surprised. "I expected her to be more formal, not like somebody you almost know," the 19-year-old said. "(She was) more like a great aunt that talks to you real frank." (source: Northwest Indiana News) VIRGINIA: Moussaoui Now Ties Himself to 9/11 Plot Zacarias Moussaoui, who is facing the death penalty for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, took the witness stand in his own defense Monday, only to bolster the government's case by unhesitatingly acknowledging the charges in the indictment against him and adding a few new, self-incriminating statements. Mr. Moussaoui said he knew in advance of Al Qaeda's plans to fly jetliners into the World Trade Center and asserted that his role on that day was to have been to fly another plane into the White House. He said he was to have been accompanied on the suicidal mission by Richard C. Reid, the so-called shoe bomber who was convicted in a separate failed effort to blow up a plane in flight. Although Mr. Moussaoui had said over the last few years that he was a member of Al Qaeda and was learning to fly a plane to participate in some "second wave" of terrorist attacks, until now he had always insisted that he knew little of the plot for the attacks and vowed to fight the death penalty to the last of his strength. But when he began his long-awaited testimony on Monday, he offered a lengthy description of a far deeper involvement with Al Qaeda and its plots. Not only was he a member of the terror network, he told the jury, he also said that he knew most of the Sept. 11 hijackers, admitted that he lied to investigators about his knowledge of their plot when he was arrested on immigration violations 3 weeks before the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, and recounted that he was ecstatic when, behind bars, he heard the news of the attacks on a radio he had bought for that purpose. Before the day was over, the jury also had the extraordinary experience of hearing a reading of testimony taken in a deposition from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is said to have organized the Sept. 11 attacks and is being held somewhere in the secret overseas detention system of the Central Intelligence Agency. That deposition, in which Mr. Mohammed answered questions agreed to by prosecutors and defense lawyers, seemed to contradict Mr. Moussaoui's assertion that he was meant to be a pilot on Sept. 11. Mr. Mohammed portrayed Mr. Moussaoui as a fringe figure who might have been used in a second wave of attacks if needed. For more than an hour, Michael Nachmanoff, a public defender, recited Mr. Mohammed's answers in what resembled an oddly disembodied literary reading. Mr. Nachmanoff read out testimony that any planning for a second wave of attacks "was only in the most preliminary stages" and that targets had not even been selected. But while that might seem to contradict Mr. Moussaoui's version of events, the defendant's 1st-person account, painting his own role in bold brushstrokes, was the day's main event. When one of Mr. Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers asked if he was to have been the so-called 20th hijacker - a member of the team on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, with only 4 hijackers aboard, while the planes that hit the Pentagon and the World Trade Center had teams of 5 - he replied, "No, I was not to be a 5th hijacker." But, he continued, "I was supposed to fly a plane into the White House." In addition to the other four planes? asked his lawyer, Gerald T. Zerkin. "That's correct," Mr. Moussaoui answered. He also asserted, for the first time, that one of his team members was to have been Mr. Reid, a British convert to Islam who was arrested on Dec. 22, 2001, while trying to detonate an explosive device in his shoe during a flight from Paris to Miami. Previous investigations have provided no evidence of Mr. Reid's involvement in any other plots, or any efforts to enter the United States in the summer of 2001. When Robert J. Spencer, the chief prosecutor, had his turn, Mr. Moussaoui agreed with just about every incriminating question. Mr. Spencer asked if the reason Mr. Moussaoui had lied to the F.B.I. agent who questioned him in Minneapolis on Aug. 16 was "so you could allow the operation to go forward." "That is correct," Mr. Moussaoui replied. After his arrest, was he looking forward to news of the attacks? "Yes, you could say that," Mr. Moussaoui said calmly. He used the phrase "that is correct" dozens of times as the prosecutor led him through the facts presented in the indictment. It was correct, Mr. Moussaoui said, that he knew hijackers were in the United States for some imminent mission that involved flying planes into buildings. Was his reason for hoping to fly a plane into the White House to kill Americans? "That is correct," he said. Mr. Moussaoui, who has been truculent through proceedings in the past three years and whose outbursts have drawn rebukes from the judge, spoke calmly with a heavy French accent, leaning forward in the witness chair, sometimes casually holding out an empty cup for a marshal to fill with water. He seemed testy only when being questioned by his own lawyer, who tried with little success to elicit replies that would help his case. Mr. Moussaoui's testimony even undercut one of the pillars of the defense his lawyers had laid out for him, that he did not know any of the 19 hijackers who died on Sept. 11. As Mr. Spencer showed him their photos, Mr. Moussaoui said he knew 17 of them from the days he helped run a Qaeda guesthouse in Afghanistan. Mr. Moussaoui, a 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan heritage, has already pleaded guilty to 6 conspiracy counts in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. The sole question before the jury here is whether he should be executed or spend the rest of his life in jail. The Justice Department has argued that he should pay with his life because had he not lied, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Aviation Administration would have moved swiftly to thwart the plot. The defense may complete its case by Tuesday, and Judge Leonie M. Brinkema told the jurors they might get to deliberate as early as Wednesday. Under the federal death penalty law, the jury must first consider whether Mr. Moussaoui's actions caused some deaths on Sept. 11. If they decide unanimously that his actions did, they move to another phase to consider whether the death penalty is appropriate. Mr. Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers, with whom he does not speak, almost certainly did not want him to testify as he did. But under the law they had no power to prevent him from doing so. Until Mr. Moussaoui took the stand, the momentum seemed to be with the defense, which had contended that he was a fringe figure in Al Qaeda whose leaders held him in low regard. Moreover, the government's case had been plagued by problems. After the disclosure that a government transportation lawyer had improperly coached some aviation security witnesses, the testimony of two other witnesses about how the F.B.I. handled investigative leads before Sept. 11 raised as many questions over the government's performance as it did about Mr. Moussaoui's culpability. In addition to having served as the government's star witness, Mr. Moussaoui acknowledged to Mr. Spencer the depth of his hatred of Americans before a jury that is to decide whether he lives or dies. He agreed that he rejoiced in the death of nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11 and that in August 2002, he wrote that he described a tape recording of a female flight attendant pleading for her life aboard one of the planes as "gorgeous." (source: New York Times)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----N.C., CALIF., USA, VA.
Rick Halperin Tue, 28 Mar 2006 09:50:36 -0600 (Central Standard Time)
