US seeks death penalty for Moussaoui

By Deborah Charles

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) – A U.S. jury began
deliberating Zacarias Moussaoui’s fate on Monday after
prosecutors requested the death penalty for the September 11
conspirator and the defense implored jurors to send him to
prison for life so he would not become a martyr.

The jury did not reach a verdict after three hours of
deliberations and were to return on Tuesday.

The only U.S. case related to the deadly hijacked airliner
attacks went to the jury after District Judge Leonie Brinkema
gave them roughly an hour of instructions.

In closing arguments, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Raskin
asked the jury to decide to execute Moussaoui, who said he
would have participated in the September 11 attacks if he had
not been arrested the previous month on immigration charges.

“Let me be blunt, ladies and gentlemen,” said Raskin.
“There is no place on this good Earth for Zacarias Moussaoui.”

But one of the court-appointed defense lawyers, Gerald
Zerkin, urged the jury to instead make a decision that
“requires some courage” and sentence Moussaoui to life in
prison.

“He wants you to sentence him to death. He came to America
to die in jihad and you are his last chance,” Zerkin said. “He
clearly sees that as his last way to martyrdom.”

The jury will just decide the sentence since Moussaoui has
pleaded guilty to six conspiracy counts relating the September
11 plot.

Moussaoui, 37, sat in the courtroom staring at the
12-member jury during most of closing proceedings. But as he
left for a morning break, Moussaoui said, “You’ll never get me,
America. Never ever.”

After the jury left to begin deliberating, Brinkema lauded
the attorneys and noted that the defense lawyers — with whom
Moussaoui will not speak — had an “impossible client.”

“There never has been a defendant as difficult as this
one,” said Brinkema.

‘SACRIFICIAL LAMB’

Prosecutors earlier dismissed defense claims that Moussaoui
was mentally ill and that he sought martyrdom.

Raskin said Moussaoui was “elated that al Qaeda murdered
2,972 innocent people on September 11.”

“Enough is enough,” Raskin said. “It is time to put an end
to his hatred and venom. It is time to sentence Zacarias
Moussaoui to death.”

The panel of nine men and three women must be unanimous in
order to sentence Moussaoui to death. The same jury already
decided Moussaoui was eligible for the death penalty.

Zerkin said the U.S. government was offering up Moussaoui
as a “sacrificial lamb.”

“The government opts for retribution against the only
person it has brought to trial in relation to 9/11,” the lawyer
said in describing Moussaoui as an inept al Qaeda operative.

The jury is considering evidence presented during two weeks
of testimony by survivors and family members of victims of the
deadly hijackings that killed about 3,000 people in New York,
Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon outside Washington not far
from the federal courthouse.

Prosecutors showed gruesome pictures of charred bodies and
a video clip of people jumping from New York’s World Trade
Center during their closing arguments.

Zerkin said the government was trying to assuage the
families’ pain with Moussaoui.

“If the people who testified … need the death of Mr.
Moussaoui to recover, it can only be because the government has
held that out for them,” he said. “The government has held out
the prospect of Mr. Moussaoui’s execution as being the cure.”

Moussaoui testified twice in the trial. He contradicted
previous statements by saying he was meant to pilot a fifth
plane into the White House as part of the hijacking plot,
though the government offered nothing to support that claim.

The 37-year-old French citizen also said he wished more
Americans could have suffered in the attacks.