Moussaoui Gets Life

[innerSpaceman]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

I thought in order to be eligible for the federal death penalty he had to have been found to have responsibility. Otherwise it couldn't have been an option.

The death penalty is not suddenly on the table when the verdict is in. It is part and parcel of the crimes the defendant is charged with, not found guilty of. There was one point where the judge was going to take it off the table because of government witness tampering, but ultimately the prosecution was able to produce new witnesses.

All for naught, since the jury did not buy the prosecution claims that Mousssaoui was a 9/11 linchpin.

[scaeagles]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

The death penalty is not suddenly on the table when the verdict is in. It is part and parcel of the crimes the defendant is charged with, not found guilty of.

Am I missing something here or not understanding what you are saying? I think I'm missing something. I realize that the death penalty is an option for sentencing at the outset, but only an option if actually found guilty of that crime. So the charge - and I guess the guilty plea involved - said that he bore some responsibility for at least one death. I know it wasn't presented as an option after the verdict (since there was no verdict with the guilty plea) was in.

I was just saying that in order for the death penalty to have been on the table at all he must have met that standard.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

The death penalty is not suddenly on the table when the verdict is in. It is part and parcel of the crimes the defendant is charged with, not found guilty of. There was one point where the judge was going to take it off the table because of government witness tampering, but ultimately the prosecution was able to produce new witnesses.

Not so. Moussaoui plead guilty, so there was never a trial to determine guilt. There were instead 2 phases in the court. The first was to determine if the crimes he plead guilty to were enough to warrant the death penalty as an option, and the second was, once the possible penalties were decided, to decide which penalty he'd get.

As for my feeling that he was not as involved as he and the government said...most observers of the trial (including families of 9/11 victims) were saying it through the whole trial, people who actually knew Moussaoui were saying it in testimony, and now the jurors who made the decission are saying it. I didn't see every detail, but every shred I did see pointed to someone with massive dillusions of grandeur and a government that desperately wanted to say, "If only he told us, we could have stopped it," which is a load of crap.