I will confess, up front, that I’ve not closely followed the Moussaoui case, let alone sat in the courtroom to hear all the testimony, let alone actually sat on the jury and heard their instructions and participated in their deliberatoins. As such, I’m not qualified (nor are, oh, 99.95% of the commentators) to say whether the jury’s decision to stick Moussaoui in a small cell for the rest of his life, rather than execute him, was the right one.
The fellow is clearly scum, regardless, and, frankly, I don’t feel particularly betrayed knowing that he’s going to be sitting in a box for most of his life, except for a brief exercise period each day, until he eventually dies (one assumes). Not only will it be an ignominious end, but reflective of the nasty wanna-be nature of his crimes.
So, you’re not one of those paranoid types that suggest he’s going to be “rescued” from SuperMax (planning his being killed in the attempt and thus martyr’d,) with chaos from the attack damaging American tranquility? Good. Neither am I.
I hope Saddam shares his fate. He’s another one who deserves to share the fate of Rudolf Hess.
Who was Rudolf Hess? (Exactly. Excellent point)
I’ve always felt that Moussaoui acted too much like the little kid who missed the last bus to Disneyland to have been anything but a peripheral player. Actually, he may have acted too much like somebody’s annoying, attention-craving kid brother all along, so the cool kids made sure he got left out.
I didn’t watch it closely either, certainly not closely enough to second-guess the jury.
It did strike me that the prosecution’s all-out appeal to emotion might be a sign that their sh*t was weak.
As for Moussaoui’s claim that he “won”, he’s already been in prison for over four years, much of it probably in isolation. He’s looking at decades of the same (or worse, no lawyers about) or death and wants his enemies to be pissed no matter what happened. He managed that, a bit. But he’s still going to sit in a box, alone 23 hours a day and exercise, alone the other hour until he dies naturally or kills himself. Some victory.
I’d prefer the thrift of a .22 to the base of his skull but this will do.
One nice thing about Moussaoui’s trial is that it showed us what al-Qaida really has to work with. This was a big deal for them, you’d think they’d send in the martyr A-Team. They had to scrape the bottom of a pretty crappy bowl to include him. Would you want him on your team for anything important?