Notes From A Burning House

Asking the jury to impose the death penalty on Zacarias Moussaoui (the admitted co-conspirator in the 9/11 terrorist attacks), prosecutor David Novak put the question in stark terms yesterday: if not in this case, when would the death penalty ever be appropriate?

Zacarias Moussaoui is clearly a dangerous guy we don’t want walking around. At the same time, he appears to be assuming a larger, darker role for us than he may deserve.

Here’s what I’ve put together. In 2001, the FBI had Moussaoui on their radar. It took the perseverance of a dedicated officer to get him ON that radar, but eventually they agreed that he seemed dangerous. He attracted attention to himself with his efforts to go to flight training school. ("I don’t need to know about landing the plane!") On 11 September 2001 he was sitting in a jail cell in Minneapolis being questioned by the FBI about terrorist plots. The government’s case is that, if Moussaoui had told the FBI everything he knew, they might have prevented 9/11.

It is, to my knowledge, an unusual case for someone to receive the death penalty on a conspiracy charge alone. He didn’t actually kill anyone. He conspired with the perpetrators and then declined to cooperate with the FBI when he was arrested. Moreover, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s information suggests that Moussaoui was a fringe character – like the runty kid who wanted to play football, so you said, "Okay, you go long."

Zacarias Moussaoui is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. He has a family history of mental illness. He exhibits disorganized speech, mania, grandiose thoughts. He has exaggerated his involvement with al-Qaeda. He has accused his own legal counsel of trying to kill him. This is the guy who pled guilty to conspiracy in the 9/11 attacks after denying it for years, and then spent the trial saying no, he was actually involved in a completely different plot to kill Americans (along with Richard "One, Two, Light Up My Shoe" Reid). He complained that his attorneys are conspiring to kill him. He has a notion that the President is going to pardon him and put him on a flight for London. He has proclaimed himself proud of the 9/11 attacks, wished out loud that every day was a September 11, and said a bunch of horrible things like that. We do not, no we do not, want this fellow out and about. What do we properly do with him? That question is academic, as I feel certain the jury is going to come back with a death sentence – we’ll see.

As I follow the sentencing phase of the trial, I am trying to observe the psychology of the process. 9/11 was a traumatic event, and here we have someone we can put on trial for what happened; someone we might execute, so that society gets the last word rather than the terrorists who are now beyond our reach (since they died along with their victims).

My problem is part moral and part political. Why must we content ourselves with the bloodletting of this poor, sick shlump? Why have we been denied the trials of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Mohammad al-Qatani (the supposed 20th hijacker), both of whom have been apprehended? (Is it because the facts of their treatment and the techniques used to interrogate them would come to light in a trial?) Why did the hunt for Osama bin Laden get dropped from the front burner? It is certain we will never hear from these perpetrators.

If the public is passionate for blood sacrifice, why are we letting the government serve us tuna and call it lobster? To my mind, Moussaoui is a weak candidate for the blood sacrifice. Moreover, I am concerned he is a convenient distraction from policies that have denied us the justice we seek. To say nothing of the queasiness I feel at the execution of the mentally ill. I don’t have an answer – I just wonder whether there is a better way.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 25th, 2006 at 4:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.