As a sometimes supporter of the DP, feeling a little mixed about this one.

One thing it shows, however, is that we are capable of giving a fair trial to somebody, regardless of how repugnant he may be.

This is a really beautiful concept, and maybe Moussaoui and his cabal will one day realize the irony in it; what was undoubtedly expected by many to be a kangaroo trial with a built-in death sentence instead resulted in intense, thoughtful deliberations culiminating in a life sentence.

One wonders what the terrorist powers will think of sentence like this. Will it be like when the Grinch realizes that though he may have taken the presents, the spirit of Christmas persists?

I hope so.

Sadly, "America, you lost" doesn't sound like his heart grew three sizes after his life was spared by the American justice system.

The one thing we know about this trial is that it was not held in Texas.

Two observations -- one personal, one professional:

- I don't blame the jury for not giving him death, seeing as how he was incarcerated on 9/11 and apparently had little, if any, role in those attacks. Last I checked, being an asshole who spouted hateful bile was still not a capital offense in and of itself. He might not have even been convicted if he hadn't pled guilty and begged for conviction.

- Be prepared for the capital defense bar and anti-death penalty advocates to point to this case and -- ignoring the facts -- make proportionality arguments in other death penalty cases ("well, if a 9/11 hijacker didn't get the death penalty, then certainly ____________ doesn't deserve it; he only killed three people, not three thousand ....")

Can't we respond with the claim that if a jury will spare this jackass, it adequately protects defendants from verdicts based upon emotion rather than law?

it's certainly better than simply saying, you're right we should keep them in a box, we should keep them behind locks.

[This message was edited by David Newell on 05-04-06 at .]

I hate to make predictions, because, as Yogi Berra once observed, "predictions are always difficult--especially when they are about the future."

But I will make 2 predictions today.

1) The terrorists (known to the MSM as "militants")will not have a change of heart as a result of the life sentence. They, unlike the Grinch, are in league with the Devil, and they have no feelings for what they consider to be infidels.

2) Unless Moussaoui is kept in solitary confinement, he will have a shorter life expectancy than he would have on Death Row. Some inmate will kill him. Remember Jeffrey Dhalmer, the guy up North who liked to eat young men, and then keep the prime portions in his freezer? He got a life sentence, & I don't think he lived 4 years in prison before some "hero" dispatched him.

I am largely opposed to the DP, but I do make exceptions for mass murderers. I would have had no problem pulling the switch on this guy, even tho he was out of the loop on 9/11, except he is obviously deranged. Yeah, I know: he was mentally competent, but he still seemed pretty darn deranged to me.

PEGGY NOONAN

They Should Have Killed Him
The death penalty has a meaning, and it isn't vengeance.

Thursday, May 4, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP)--Moussaoui said as he was led from the courtroom: "America, you lost." He clapped his hands.

Excuse me, I'm sorry, and I beg your pardon, but the jury's decision on Moussaoui gives me a very bad feeling. What we witnessed here was not the higher compassion but a dizzy failure of nerve.

From the moment the decision was announced yesterday, everyone, all the parties involved--the cable jockeys, the legal analysts, the politicians, the victim representatives--showed an elaborate and jarring politesse. "We thank the jury." "I accept the verdict of course." "We can't question their hard work." "I know they did their best." "We thank the media for their hard work in covering this trial." "I don't want to second-guess the jury."

How removed from our base passions we've become. Or hope to seem.

It is as if we've become sophisticated beyond our intelligence, savvy beyond wisdom. Some might say we are showing a great and careful generosity, as befits a great nation. But maybe we're just, or also, rolling in our high-mindedness like a puppy in the grass. Maybe we are losing some crude old grit. Maybe it's not good we lose it.

No one wants to say, "They should have killed him." This is understandable, for no one wants to be called vengeful, angry or, far worse, unenlightened. But we should have put him to death, and for one big reason.

This is what Moussaoui did: He was in jail on a visa violation in August 2001. He knew of the upcoming attacks. In fact, he had taken flight lessons to take part in them. He told no one what was coming. He lied to the FBI so the attacks could go forward. He pled guilty last year to conspiring with al Qaeda; at his trial he bragged to the court that he had intended to be on the fifth aircraft, which was supposed to destroy the White House.

He knew the trigger was about to be pulled. He knew innocent people had been targeted, and were about to meet gruesome, unjust deaths.

He could have stopped it. He did nothing. And so 2,700 people died.

This is what the jury announced yesterday. They did not doubt Moussaoui was guilty of conspiracy. They did not doubt his own testimony as to his guilt. They did not think he was incapable of telling right from wrong. They did not find him insane. They did believe, however, that he had had an unstable childhood, that his father was abusive and then abandoning, and that as a child, in his native France, he'd suffered the trauma of being exposed to racial slurs.

As I listened to the court officer read the jury's conclusions yesterday I thought: This isn't a decision, it's a non sequitur.

Of course he had a bad childhood; of course he was abused. You don't become a killer because you started out with love and sweetness. Of course he came from unhappiness. So, chances are, did the nice man sitting on the train the other day who rose to give you his seat. Life is hard and sometimes terrible, and that is a tragedy. It explains much, but it is not a free pass.

I have the sense that many good people in our country, normal modest folk who used to be forced to endure being patronized and instructed by the elites of all spheres--the academy and law and the media--have sort of given up and cut to the chase. They don't wait to be instructed in the higher virtues by the professional class now. They immediately incorporate and reflect the correct wisdom before they're lectured.

I'm not sure this is progress. It feels not like the higher compassion but the lower evasion. It feels dainty in a way that speaks not of gentleness but fear.

I happen, as most adults do, to feel a general ambivalence toward the death penalty. But I know why it exists. It is the expression of a certitude, of a shared national conviction, about the value of a human life. It says the deliberate and planned taking of a human life is so serious, such a wound to justice, such a tearing at the human fabric, that there is only one price that is justly paid for it, and that is the forfeiting of the life of the perpetrator. It is society's way of saying that murder is serious, dreadfully serious, the most serious of all human transgressions.

It is not a matter of vengeance. Murder can never be avenged, it can only be answered.

If Moussaoui didn't deserve the death penalty, who does? Who ever did?

And if he didn't receive it, do we still have it?

I don't want to end with an air of hopelessness, so here's some hope, offered to the bureau of prisons. I hope he doesn't get cable TV in his cell. I hope he doesn't get to use his hour a day in general population getting buff and converting prisoners to jihad. I hope he isn't allowed visitors with whom he can do impolite things like plot against our country. I hope he isn't allowed anniversary interviews. I hope his jolly colleagues don't take captives whom they threaten to kill unless Moussaoui is released.

I hope he doesn't do any more damage. I hope this is the last we hear of him. But I'm not hopeful about my hopes.

I love Peggy Noonan for turns of phrase like this one:

"But maybe we're just ... rolling in our high-mindedness like a puppy in the grass."

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2) Unless Moussaoui is kept in solitary confinement, he will have a shorter life expectancy than he would have on Death Row....I don't think he lived 4 years in prison before some "hero" dispatched him.

- I'm thinking one of the muslim prison gangs will welcome him w/open arms.


... even tho he was out of the loop on 9/11

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Only reason he was out of the loop was b/c that was how it was set up by the planners and financers. The news was saying that none of the hijackers knew what was going down until after they had been here for a while. They intentionally were kept in the dark for just this type of situation.

I tend to agree with the families of 9-1-1 victims that were split as to whether they agreed with the verdict for this turd. But both said that what's his name, the planner and what's his name, the money man, who we have in custody, are even better candidates to ride the lightening.

I felt, as the trial went on, and the (to borrow the Persian translation of the word "dirt-bag") TURD (which also is a favorite word of us old-timer HPD veterans)told his listeners, including the jury, that he wanted to die, that he wanted to be made a martyr, that the jury should give him death and all that other hogwash he offered during the proceedings, that he was in fact manipulating the jury, the news media, the commentators, irritators, agitators and all the other tators in the audience.

I think he did a double-Mcguffin on the court: he said he wanted to die, and he would become a martyr/hero. So, the news people and the tators and the jury all start thinking to themselves, "Wait a minute, if we give him death, we're doing exactly what he wants. Let's don't do that, and we'll make him really mad."

But, the turd-rustler is thinking, "Heh-heh, stupid infidels, they're saying not to give me what I want, so they'll give me the opposite of what I want, which is just what I want! Ha-hahaahaa-ha-ha!" And the whole time I'm thinking, "Hey, he asked for the d.p., so take that as a green light, or at least consider that when the chemicals do their work, old martyr will finally realize that he might have made the wrong request, and it would be too late to reverse his psychology."

Does anybody really think that Moussaoui, or however you spell it, Turd is much easier, is disappointed in getting a life sentence? For Pete's sake, he even said it himself, "America loses." Which to me, is proof that he very artfully manipulated his triers of fact. And I agree with the Noonan article in that now, terrorists have a bargaining chip at their disposal. Every time a hostage is taken, they can demand the release of their hero, which won't happen, which could lead to another one, and so on.

I have a suggestion though, since nobody asked: Why not do an interstate compact transfer with him to get him to serve his time in Texas prison?
'Nuff said.

"A Tale of Two Towers," a children's story by A.P. Merillat. Starring Zacharias Moussaoui as Brer Rabbit ....

I don't necessarily agree with Peggy Noonan on this one, but I do agree with what her paper says:


Moussaoui Loses
The Wall Street Journal
May 4, 2006; Page A14

Yesterday, a Virginia jury sentenced 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui to life in prison without parole. "America, you lost . . . I won," Moussaoui declared as he was being led away. Though we sympathize with those who believe he should have paid with his life, in the end the system was able to mete out some justice.

Yet the trial also underscored the limits of the criminal justice system as a tool of war. Moussaoui was charged in December 2001, so disposing of the case took nearly 4 1/2 years. For a time he represented himself, turning the courtroom into a circus. Later his court-appointed attorneys demanded to put detained al Qaeda leaders on the stand. The Supreme Court said no, but there's no guarantee that future prosecutors won't be forced to choose between revealing national-security secrets in open court and letting a terrorist go free. While the courts -- which must also deal with ordinary crime -- can handle one Moussaoui circus, hundreds of such cases could cripple the justice system.

Then there are the "mitigating factors" that led the jury to reject death. According to news reports, three of the 12 jurors agreed that Moussaoui, of Moroccan ethnicity, "was subject to racism as a child" in his native France. Nine jurors agreed that "Moussaoui's father had a violent temper and physically and emotionally abused his family." America is at war with a relentless enemy, which observes no rules of war and wantonly murders innocent civilians. Fretting over whether enemy agents had dysfunctional childhoods is no way to win that war.

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Originally posted by Shannon Edmonds:
Two observations -- one personal, one professional:

- Be prepared for the capital defense bar and anti-death penalty advocates to point to this case and -- ignoring the facts -- make proportionality arguments in other death penalty cases ("well, if a 9/11 hijacker didn't get the death penalty, then certainly ____________ doesn't deserve it; he only killed three people, not three thousand ....")

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How can you choose who dies?

The application of the ultimate punishment is inexact at best. Some say that is reason to abolish it.

By CHRIS TISCH, St. Petersberg Times
Published May 8, 2006


Zacarias Moussaoui pleaded guilty in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed 3,000 people, a crime that Moussaoui said gave him great delight. He was sentenced to life in prison.

John Spenkelink was convicted of fatally shooting a fellow drifter and career criminal in a Tallahassee hotel room.

He was executed.

As the public digests the Moussaoui sentence, they may ask: How can a man connected to the murder of thousands receive a life sentence while a man who kills a single person in a moment of greed, rage or fear receives a death sentence? Is there disparity in how the death penalty is handed out in America?

"If you found Moussaoui guilty of the conspiracy that killed 3,000 people and he doesn't get death, it does make it hard to explain to a client why he's getting death over an accidental shooting during a robbery in which there was a struggle over $50," said Pinellas-Pasco Public Defender Bob Dillinger.

Death penalty opponents say the Moussaoui case shows that death sentences are unfairly arbitrary, one reason the death penalty is irreparably broken and should be scrapped as a form of punishment.

Death penalty supporters point out that Moussaoui wasn't charged with murder but with conspiracy. The case was not a slam-dunk for the ultimate punishment and therefore should not be used to indict the entire death penalty system as unfairly haphazard.

"You're talking about a conspiracy and he wasn't one of the parties that did that," said Bruce Bartlett, the chief assistant in Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe's office. "There may be some significant differences that led to that result."

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(for the rest of the article, click here: the link

Wow Shannon! You really are like Nostradamus.

Got any tips on the stock market? Or how about the 7th race at Elgin downs this weekend?

quote:

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Originally posted by Terry Breen:
Wow Shannon! You really are like Nostradamus.

Got any tips on the stock market? Or how about the 7th race at Elgin downs this weekend?

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The only stock market tip you'll ever need is this one: don't take stock market advice from anyone who still has to work for a living.