Moussaoui’s Fate Is Handed Over to Jury

The fate of Zacarias Moussaoui was turned over to a federal court jury Monday, and the nine men and three women began debating whether he should be executed for his role in the Sept. 11 conspiracy or spend the rest of his life in prison.

In closing arguments, prosecutors declared that the French Moroccan member of Al Qaeda, arrested while in flight training in Minnesota weeks before the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, should pay with his life for the 2,972 innocents killed that day.

“This is the United States of America,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. David Novak. “We are not going to put up with a bunch of thugs who invoke God’s name and kill thousands of innocent people.”

But defense attorney Gerald Zerkin urged the jury to sentence Moussaoui to life without chance of parole, arguing that a life sentence for the admitted terrorist would be a fate worse than death.

“His death will not make them [victims and their relatives] better,” Zerkin said. “It won’t even start them on the road to recovery.”

Jurors deliberated about three hours Monday afternoon and were to return to the courthouse this morning to continue deliberations.

At several breaks in the trial Monday, when the judge stepped down and the jury cleared the courtroom, Moussaoui hurled epithets and boasted that the U.S. justice system could not touch him.

“Never get me, America!” he shouted after prosecutors asked for a death sentence. “Never, never!”

Moussaoui warned that a new generation of Al Qaeda terrorists will follow him, whether he is dispatched to federal death row in Indiana or to a solitary prison cell in Colorado.

“Our children will carry on the fight!” he screamed.

Moussaoui, 37, pleaded guilty last year to being a Sept. 11 conspirator. His sentencing trial began March 6, and the jury found him eligible for the death penalty. Now jurors are weighing whether he should die or face life in prison.

Their decision is complex. They were given a 42-page “special verdict form,” and they first must make findings on three aggravating factors against Moussaoui.

The factors, spelled out in federal law, state that Moussaoui, conspiring with other Al Qaeda members, “knowingly created a grave risk of death”; that the deaths were “especially heinous, cruel or depraved”; and that Moussaoui was involved in “substantial planning and premeditation” for the attacks.

The jury must decide that prosecutors have proved at least one of the three statutory aggravating factors to proceed toward a death sentence. If they decide that none was proved, jurors must give Moussaoui a life term.

But if jurors decide that at least one of the statutory factors was proved, they can begin weighing other, nonstatutory factors laid out by the prosecution and defense.

There are seven nonstatutory aggravating factors. They generally deal with the large loss of life and destruction around the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and note that Moussaoui was “gaining specialized knowledge in flying an aircraft in order to kill as many American citizens as possible.”

Moussaoui had been in this country about eight months and was taking pilot lessons when he was arrested three weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks.

As prosecutors did during the trial, on Monday they showed the jury photographs of burned bodies inside the Pentagon rubble and smashed corpses on the concrete courtyard at the World Trade Center. They again showed a video of people jumping or falling from the towers, trying in vain to hit a large awning that they apparently hoped would cushion the fall.

“It is still hard to believe,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. David Raskin. “It’s still difficult to watch those images 4 1/2 years later. Can you imagine how horrible it was to die that day?”

The defense has argued that Moussaoui was a fringe figure in the Sept. 11 plot. Raskin told the jury that he was a key player and asked jurors not to be bothered that men known to have masterminded the plot have not been charged with a crime, even though they are in U.S. custody.

He said the government is still interrogating them and implied they might eventually face trial. “They are giving information,” Raskin said. “But what do you think is going to happen when they stop?”

And he told the jurors to reject the notion that execution would make Moussaoui a martyr, or that it might prompt Al Qaeda to strike again in the U.S.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he told the jury, “Osama bin Laden could care less what happens here. He hates us and he’s always going to hate us whether Zacarias Moussaoui is executed or is in jail.”

When Zerkin rose to defend Moussaoui, he outlined 24 mitigating factors that the jury could use to reach a decision of life in prison. They include Moussaoui’s impoverished and abusive childhood in France, the racism he felt in Western Europe, and testimony that he was brainwashed into joining Al Qaeda while studying in England.

The mitigating factors also note that Moussaoui was in jail on Sept. 11 and, most important to the defense, that he “suffers from a psychotic disorder, most likely schizophrenia, paranoid subtype.”

Zerkin accused the government of offering up Moussaoui as the “sacrificial lamb” when the top terrorist leaders have not been prosecuted. He said execution is exactly what his client desires.

“He wants you to send him to death,” Zerkin said. “He is baiting you to do it. He came to America to die in jihad, and you are his last chance.

“He clearly sees that as his last way to martyrdom. Death is what he wants and what he can only get if you accommodate him.”

In contrast to prosecutors showing photos of corpses, Zerkin held up a children’s picture book published after Sept. 11. Titled “The Little Chapel That Stood,” it tells the story of the historic St. Paul’s Chapel near the trade center that survived Sept. 11 pretty much unscathed.

The rhyming verse speaks of resilience and hope and suggests forgiveness over revenge.

“Our littlest good deed,” Zerkin read, holding the book aloft, “is never in vain.”