Moussaoui Draws Life in Prison

Jurors Reject Death Penalty For Moussaoui sayz the Washington Post:

"Al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui will spend the rest of his life in a maximum security prison for his role in the Sept. 11 attacks after a federal jury rejected the government's four-year quest to secure his execution for the deadliest terrorist strike on U.S. soil.

After weeks of listening to harrowing testimony from 9/11 family members, hearing heartbreaking emergency calls and watching painful footage of victims jumping to their deaths, the anonymous jury of nine men and three women methodically deliberated for 41 hours over seven days before reaching its verdict yesterday.

Jurors carefully went over each question on a 42-page verdict form that gave only a few clues to their thoughts and reasoning. In the end, though, the form indicated that prosecutors could not surmount the main obstacle hanging over their case from the start: Moussaoui did not hijack anything Sept. 11, 2001, because he was sitting in jail.

The panel could not decide unanimously that Moussaoui caused the nearly 3,000 deaths, nor could it agree that he committed his crimes 'in an especially heinous, cruel or depraved manner.' Three jurors took it upon themselves to write that Moussaoui had 'limited knowledge of the 9/11 attack plans.'

'The jury seemed to be saying that he is a bit player, someone at the periphery,' said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp. 'It boils down to someone whose hands were not drenched in blood.'"

His death does nothing to secure the defense of the US. Let him wither behind bars: forgotten, alone, irrelevent.

Would solitary confinement be too cruel and unusual?

May he live each day aware that he'll never be the "martyr" he wanted to become. May he live every day face to face with the waste his life has become and will continue to be. May he finally understand the utter depravity that he perpetrated on the families of 9/11 victims and the people of the United States.

And when he's done it all, may he at last repent of the depraved evil and indifference that he's wrought.