Charles Johnson at LGF doesn't like the Moussaoui verdict. He thinks that life in prison means that Moussaoui gets to exploit the system and keep exploiting it to America's detriment.
Moussaoui is much more valuable to the global jihad (and its Western enablers) as a living symbol of Western “oppression” than he would be as a failed attacker, ignobly executed by infidels.
I don't disagree with this statement. However, since I oppose the death penalty on pro-life grounds, I have to say that just because I don't support official government executions doesn't mean I'm going to lose any sleep if one of Moussaoui's butt-buddies offs him in the back of the prison laundry room.
UPDATE: Captain Ed says it way better than I just did.
UPDATE and BUMP: Fox News reports that Moussaoui is trying to call 'takebacks' on his guilty plea. The purpose of this can only be to mock us some more. However,
At sentencing, [U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema] told Moussaoui: "You do not have a right to appeal your convictions, as was explained to you when you plead guilty" in April 2005. "You waived that right."
Would our resident legal minds care to call the play-by-play on this particular snowball as it rolls through the Seventh Circle of Hell?
R.I.P. Steven Malcolm Anderson
I would be interested to hear Mark Adam's explain the chances for appeals at this point. Obviously he is entitled, but given his testimony I am not so sure he would get a new trial.
I see Moussaoui as a failed attacker. I do feel that had he been given execution, that would further his cause. As it stands, everytime he opens his mouth, he furthers his agenda. As one pundit put it..tomorrow is a new day and he will fade into but a memory. We will not hear of him until he dies. I tend to agree with that.
Who remembers the blind sheikh?
So there's no misunderstanding, I approve of the death penalty.
Rose doesn't like to gay-bash. Go figure. Neither one of us is a purely party-line ideologue.
I believe in particularly heinouse cases involving multiple murderers, terrorists, or kidnappers and rapists who "eliminate" their victims/witnesses, they have forfeited the right to remain human beings.
I have some liberal friends who still don't believe me when I tell that to their face. It was why the National Lawyers Guild and I never got past the first date stage.
I had a roomate who was a member, they held a strategy meeting at our house to set up stations to bail out protesters demonstrating an execution and were expecting to be arrested. We weren't going to join the protest, but us students were going to observe and report while the those who'd taken the bar were going to stake out police HQ ready to post bonds.
I took a pass, not my scene. Not my cause. Nobody gave me one reason to be there except the fact that capital punishment should be opposed on principle, not that there was an injustice in this guy's particular conviction. Maybe there was. I didn't really ask either, but this wasn't Texas or Florida. I knew Ohio wasn't an execution mill.
I also knew Voinovich (unlike the scumbag in Columbus now) was a fair and conciencious Governor. Even though I never voted for my classmate's father and probably never will, I trusted him a lot more than a lot of other politicians. If, after some 17 years of appeals, if anybody saw a reason to spare this guy, George V. would commute the sentence. I had no idea what we hoped to accomplish with the protest.
I believe that capital punishment is abused, that absolute tragedies occur with completely innocent people being murdered by the state. (If the State's verdict is void ab initio, they had no right to execute, thus getting away with murder.) I also believe that there is no deterrent value to it. Neither is there a cost/benefit analysis that justifies it. I believe it does little more than retribution, but honestly, that's enough. If it makes a victim's family feel better, throw the switch.
I believe that too many Governors do not take their responsibilities seriously in this matter and are more concerned with looking tough on crime than correcting an injustice when it occurs. The Bush brothers act(ed) that way, at least on the surface.
I also believe that when everybody plays fair, witnesses, cops, prosecutors, judges, etc., and a jury still makes an affirmative finding of guilt on each and every mitigating and aggravating factor presented at sentencing, as required, death is an appropriate punishment. (But Geez-Oh-Pete somebody teach the death-tech how to find a vein.)
Clear? Okay. Moussaoui (can I buy a consonant?) is nutZ!
My opinion is that he's clinically deranged, but I wasn't there, and more importantly he does not fit the legal definition of insane. This guy is a fanatic, but not delusionally living on another planet like Hinkley. If he did what he said, and he said it so proudly, he's such a loon that there is a serious question whether he thought what he did was wrong (and that is the legal definition of insane: not appreciating the wrongness of your acts.)
However, the guilt phase was the place to raise insanity, not at sentencing, and the guilt phase was over in '02 when he plead guilty as far as I'm concerned.
If I trust the Ohio courts and our former GOP Governor on these matters, I trust the Federal Judiciary even more. Despite the prosecutorial misconduct in this case, from what I know the jury wasn't tainted by it and it was dealt with swiftly and effectively by the judge and the justice department. The tainted expert witnesses were prevented from testifying and the Assistant Prosecutor was fired and may be disbarred last I heard.
The Government may have lost their case right there. Since jeapardy attached once the jury was sworn, the government couldn't just dismiss the charges and bring them again later like they did with Padilla. In the prosecutor's defense, it's not much, but she may have served a good cause in helping some of the 9/11 victims in their civil suit. But I don't have that much sympathy there.
I do have sympathy and respect for Moussaoui's attorneys, having a client that hated them and undermined their every effort on his behalf. If ever there was a "shitty job but somebody had to do it," that was it.
I also have sympathy for the jury. They were made to relive, minute by minute, all the horrible details of September 11th, 2001. After all that, and seeing that whack-job a dozen feet away from them every day, and still they didn't vote for death, I have to trust this jury's judgment. Don't forget that all capital cases have "death approved" juries: members who all have sworn that if the evidence warrants they will follow the law and are not against the death penalty on moral grounds.
Pam, you asked about appeals. There are no appeals. He won. He had five attorney's with him when he plead guilty and throughout trial, so ineffective assistance of counsel doesn't fly. He didn't like them and wanted his own attorney, but the law doesn't say you get the attorney of your choice, but only that the attorney be competent. They were.
Insanity? As I stated before, sentencing wasn't the place to raise the issue. So, even if the appeals court somehow entertains the notion that this issue was preserved for appeal, he doesn't go free. They have a new trial in which the "relief" he might get is either life in Supermax, again, or an "indefinite detention" in a mental institution, or this time he does get death.
And even though he is crazy, and that he thinks he was fighting some just cause so his acts weren't necessarily wrong, he still appreciated the consequences of the acts, the harm he intended to cause, so instanity won't, can't fly.
He won. Certiorary Denied.
I really can't imagine how his appeal isn't dismissed before oral arguments for lack of appealable error or appropriate remedy. A twisted theory of newly discovered evidence of nutzyness maybe? Not even then since insanity is an affirmative defense and in order to preserve it, you have to raise it at trial, the guilt phase, and there is an ample showing on the record (94 handwritten motions before arraignment, his all to apparent weirdness, the ridiculous amount of vowels in his name, his outrageous French accent) that if, in his lawyers judgment this would not have been an effective defense despite these indicators, the appeals courts will not second-guess a competent lawyers' tactical decisions on how to make his or her case.
Had he gotten death instead of life, the appeals are automatic, the prosecutor's misconduct would have been seriously scrutinized, the whole trial would have been put under a microscope and it would be almost 2020 until we heard the last of this thing. As it is, we won't have to suffer his raving anymore, and he will indeed be adequately punished. Ce la vie.
Supermax :That's where he's going. As Seinfeld's Soup Man might say, "No Virgins for YOU!"
One of your better posts. Thanks for making the point as to the reality of LIP in a supermax prison cell.
Do you really see the SCOTUS saying he deserves all-access cable, porn, gym equipment and degrees? I don't see any court in the land (even the 9th circuit) psycotic enough to rule that way. The American people wouldn't stand for it - and I doubt any 'bleeding heart liberal' is idiotic enough to try it, because any cause they're connected to is going to suffer the backlash for it...
And Mark- typos aside, you answered my questions to a tee! Thanks
Moussaoui's latest nonsense confirms my considered legal opinion that this dude is fucked in the head, and ain't going nowhere but into a box.
Zacharias Moussaui makes Preznit Intellectually Impaired look like a frackin' Rhodes Scholar.
Who remembers his attorney?
That said, frankly it would probably be kinder to execute him than keep him in Supermax solitary for the rest of his life. He'll just get more and more nuts.