[I]n their effort to secure Moussaoui's execution, prosecutors were fighting the current of recent history: A federal jury in Alexandria has never voted for a sentence of death. ...Let's hope it is.
Federal juries nationwide have also strongly preferred life over death. Since 1991, juries have voted for death sentences 51 times, compared with 93 sentences of life in prison, according to the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel. Since 2000, amid publicity about the exoneration of some death row inmates by DNA and other evidence, federal juries have returned 69 life sentences, compared with 29 for death.
In the case most comparable to Moussaoui's, the 2001 trial of four al-Qaeda members accused of blowing up U.S. embassies in East Africa, a federal jury in New York chose life in prison instead of death for the two defendants eligible for death. Ten jurors wrote on the verdict form that executing one of the men would make him a martyr, and five said life in prison would be a greater punishment.
May 3, 2006
Moussaoui must live.
After thinking about it for 7 days, the jury rejects the death penalty.
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Ten jurors wrote on the verdict form that executing one of the men would make him a martyr, and five said life in prison would be a greater punishment.
I sincerely hope that this is merely an after-the-fact rationalization for not voting to execute him and that they really aren't so foolish as to believe it.
I'm willing to do the arithmetic. Is there any chance the jury will reimburse me the taxes I pay to provide that evil kook with three hots and a cot? I'd rather that money go to a disadvantaged child working for a better life.
I wish they could put him in the cage next to Charles Manson. They could have some wonderful conversations.
Well, I for one am happy they are not going to execute him, simply because he wanted to die. He expected to die, he wanted a glorious martyr's death with the attendant 72 virgins or whatever, and now he's not going to get it. To Moussaoui, death wasn't a punishment, it was a reward -- and now that has been denied.
I know it's expensive to keep him, but I do honestly hope he lives a long, natural, miserable life and finally dies peacefully in his sleep, still in his cell, at the age of 92.
Writing that, I realized how horribly uncharitable that thought is, and reflected that it would be wonderful if he could have a conversion of heart and actually be sorry for what he did.
Wonderful, sure, but highly unlikely, I think. Sparing Moussaoui isn't about giving him a chance for redemption, it's about inflicting appropriate punishment. Death would've been too quick and too easy.
He's going to die in prison. And it won't be a long time, either.
Even criminals have standards.
Well, I for one am happy they are not going to execute him, simply because he wanted to die. He expected to die, he wanted a glorious martyr's death with the attendant 72 virgins or whatever, and now he's not going to get it.
If that were true, he would have gone down fighting trying to take as many of us with him as he could in the process. Instead he let himself be captured alive much like Saddam Hussein who promised to go down fighting.
It does without saying that we should give a rat’s feingold what the Islamacists or anyone facing a capital sentence says that they want. Otherwise they would all say that they want to die in the hopes that some bleeding heart moron on the jury would say “I know, let’s let them live, that’ll show them.”
Can you spell shank boys and girls.
Thorley, let me assure you that I'm no bleeding heart. The fact that Moussaoui is a coward on top of being a lunatic is incidental. From the descriptions of the legal proceedings, it seemed to me that Moussaoui was doing everything he could to make sure he would get the death penalty. If being happy that he is being denied his celestial reward makes me a moron in your eyes, I can live with that.
Death would've been too quick and too easy.
and five said life in prison would be a greater punishment.
I dislike the mentality behind comments like these. "Death" seems to me a natural stopping point for human cruelty. If one thinks death is commensurable with live imprisonment -- which these comments, at least, indicate -- choosing an alternative punishment because you think it is worse than death is just excessive. And cruel.
A lot of politicians, particularly anti-death penalty politicians, use this "life imprisonment is worse than death" trope all the time, and I find it repellent. I am a whole-hearted supporter of the death penalty, but death is where it ought to end. If Moussaoui deserved death (as I think he did), then kill him. Or perhaps refrain on the grounds that he may be made a martyr of. But to refrain in the hope that long years of imprisonment will somehow be a greater torment to him strikes me as mere barbarity.
And re:
Robert's right. He's going to die in prison, because prisoners do have standards. How long did it take the inmates to do away with Jeffrey Dahmer? Not too long, if I recall. Moussaoui will die more quickly now than if they had sentenced him to death, with subsequent years worth of appeals. We'll all be money ahead, tax-wise.
How is this any different from the recently much-excoriated practice of "rendition"? We don't want the blood on our hands, so we turn the matter over to other people, somewhere somewhat out of the public eye, so they can do it for us.
For my part, I suspect I'm considerably less disturbed/disgusted at the prospect of American torture and brutality than the other posters here, but I don't see how this cavalier attitude towards letting the prisoners do our dirty work can possibly be proper.
I know I'm being a moralistic scold here, but honestly, this kind of commentary strikes me as a touch egregious.
Wow, yet another colossal loss for the President.
I personally think that we should rethink our confinement=OK, death=OK, corporal punishment is not OK ordering.
Oh, I am 100% behind corporal punishment too. I'm not sure whether it was a thread you were participating in before, but I've gone on and on about how barbaric I think American prisons (and prisons in general) are, and how we ought to replace prison in most cases with corporal punishment. On the other hand, I don't think torture is worse than death either, because I don't think the two can be compared -- my support for the death penalty doesn't really rest on a theory of deterrence, but on a theory of desert, since I don't think we administer it with sufficient regularity and frequency for it to have a coherent deterrent effect.
More generally, I don't think the pursuit of ultimate deterrence should be the great end of our scheme of punishment. I mean, sure, we could always increase deterrence by promising to use thumbscrews, blinding irons, and the rack for especially heinous crimes, but even I, black-hearted though I am, would balk at that.
For the most part, actually, I agree with you. I just find gloating about how something is going to be "worse than death" repugnant (if you think it's worse than death don't do it, I say), and find approval of tossing a prisoner to his fellow inmates to be torn to pieces scarcely less savage.
Everything I've heard about radical Islam indicates that the the death penalty would have been a glorious martyrdom, whereas prison is a humiliating defeat. So it is okay by me. I just hope they make him tend pigs.
Marghlar: Ergo, someone who has already killed and raped three people has no reason to stop, because if he is now likely to get the death penalty, there can be no more serious consequences for his behavior.
Now that I think about it, if we assume for the moment that the death penalty does, in fact, have meaningful deterrent effect, it's not necessarily the case that "if he is now likely to get the death penalty" leads to "no more serious consequences." Or more precisely, deterrence shouldn't operate according to a simple up-down likely/not-likely variable. Rather, because of the vagaries of our legal system, every incremental murder you commit makes it incrementally more likely that you are going to get sent down for execution. Every incremental murder introduces new ascertainable evidence on which to convict you, and the more evidence you confront, the harder it is to get it all disregarded. So there is still deterrence at work.
Flame away at me if you like, but I'm finding this comment thread to be exceptionally repugnant and even barbaric.
Ugh.
reader_iam lie down with dogs...
Balfegor, I'm trying to figure out why you think life imprisonment is OK if martyrdom were the alternative, but not OK if it's imposed within a framework of being worse than dying. It is, after all, the same punishment.
I think just about anyone could imagine "a fate worse than death." There's a reason that phrase is a cliche. Death, especially by execution, is accomplished quickly, so whatever pain or anguish suffered is short-term. Then it's done, and the deceased no longer has to bear any responsibility for his actions. It's an easy out for anyone, and for people like Moussaoui, it's a ticket to paradise.
I much prefer to reserve the death penalty for the most egregious cases. In most cases the perp should be forced to work for the rest of his life to 1) cover his living expenses and 2) pay off his debt to his victims and/or his victims' families.
I'm not going anywhere near the "prisoners will kill him for us" or the corporal punishment ideas!
Joan,
Not to answer for him, but AN answer to this:
"I'm trying to figure out why you think life imprisonment is OK if martyrdom were the alternative, but not OK if it's imposed within a framework of being worse than dying. It is, after all, the same punishment."
is that the way this punishment is viewed by others, especially the world's pool of potential terrorists, matters a lot.
One of the reasons people say this is bad is because it sends a message to potential terrorists that the US is soft on terror. But they've not shown the pool of potential terrorists would rather go to jail for life than die. And really, considering all the suicide bombers, I think the onus is on them to prove just that.
A suicide bomber, which is what Mousaui aspired to become, is a particular type of coward- one that would rather die fighting than live fighting- and a certain type of loser- one that would rather lose gloriously, and claim eternal victimhood, then win and no longer have an excuse for being garbage.
To someone who has the peculiar characteristics of a would-be suicide bomber, spending a lifetime in an American prisoner is MUCH worse than dying in a blaze of glory.
alexmitchell:
Bingo!
Except that I do have a problem with people taking pleasure in anyone getting bashed/raped/killed, because it's precisely that attitude that accounts for why everything else you talk about it is the reality in U.S. prisons.
I'm finding this comment thread to be exceptionally repugnant and even barbaric.
You said a mouthful.
I'd like to thank the jurors for doing a job I wouldn't have wanted foisted on me. Would I have come to the same conclusion? No way to know -- I didn't see all the testimony.
Among other reasons.
why you think life imprisonment is OK if martyrdom were the alternative, but not OK if it's imposed within a framework of being worse than dying. It is, after all, the same punishment.
Harkonnendog's is a good answer. My own is rather simpler -- if you're doing something for pragmatic reasons, that doesn't carry the same moral taint as doing that same thing just for the sake of being cruel.
I think that in any hierarchy where death is considered commensurable with physical suffering, death itself should provide the upper bound on morally permissible excruciations. "Worse than death," for me, carries the clear subtext "they will cry out for death, but it will not come!" Insert diabolic chuckles as needed. Now, as I have said, I myself do not think such an hierarchy is appropriate or accurate. But many people clearly do. And when these people call for punishments "worse than death," I disapprove.
As for its being a cliche, I don't think that's of any particular weight one way or the other, when we're actually talking about someone who will either be executed or face the fate "worse than death." After all, "the third degree" is a light joke, a cliche, when a teenager complains that his guardians are questioning him about where he was and what he was doing. But it's not such a joke when you're actually talking about a man in a cell being beaten with a rubber hose.
I want to distance myself from the expressions of hope that any prisoner would be beaten, raped, or killed by other prisoners. It is the government's responsibility to keep order in prisons and to protect the persons it has incapacitated from protecting themselves. The punishment should come in the form of disciplined restrictions. Living conditions should be austere, without pleasures and with substantial work requirements. There should be nothing that provokes outrage, just grimly ordinary limitation. Don't stain your own soul by involving yourself in willing crimes. He is incapacitated forever, removed from society just as much as if he were dead. Think of him as nothing, and go on with your life.
Don't stain your own soul by involving yourself in willing crimes.
That would be the "among other reasons" part.
Is it cathartic to ponder how one would incarcerate his man? I envision a small island, about 15 miles east of Isle Royale, in the middle of Lake Superior. There is plenty of fresh water, lots of wood, a small cabin with ill-fitting windows and doors, a fireplace, tools to make logs and to split wood. A Koran will be provided. The only source of food, other than vegetable seeds and a small plot of land, is a generous population of wild boar.
Periodically, heat-sensing pictures will see what's up. Otherwise, Zaccarias will be quite alone.
"And rape should never, ever be imposed as punishment. That's horrific."
Agreed... Plus- the guy doing the raping is having a great time. What kind of punishment is that?
Either way, the jihadis will spin the verdict to their propagandistic ends.
I personally hope that Mr. M lives to be revealed publicly and constantly as the cowardly, cheap slimeball that he is, thus revealing the slimeball-ness of his movement and of the media that will soon begin fawning all over him. Our government seems incapable of rhetoric to denounce jihadism; let Mr. M do it for them.
If you expect Moussaoui will suffer one or more of the unpleasant fates predicted above, check out a description of the federal supermax ultra-high-security prison to which he will certainly be consigned. Supermax inmates spend 23 of 24 hours in solitary lockdown in all-concrete windowless cells. Opportunities for interaction with other inmates are nonexistent, which would seem to rule out rape, murder, etc.
Life without parole in such tomb-like surroundings might well be a fate worse than death (not that I care -- if Moussaoui had undergone a Timothy McVeigh type execution, it would have been satisfying indeed).
"If you can't abide by that, there are plenty of other legal systems around the world where a thirst for pure vengeance can be fed."
Not fair. The people calling for him to be murdered and/or raped aren't thirsting for vengeance- they are thirsting for justice.
Life in prison is not a JUST punishment for conspiring to murder thousands of people. Not even you would argue such, I think.
Life in prison is not a JUST punishment for conspiring to murder thousands of people.
That's not what the jury said. And I have to believe they have the best tools to decide. They heard all the evidence.
President Bush said Wednesday the verdict rejecting the death penalty for al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui "represents the end of this case but not an end to the fight against terror."
Without commenting directly on the jury's decision, Bush declared, "Evil will not have the final say. This great nation will prevail."
Tristero asks, and I echo that request, would someone please explain what President Bush is saying?
I thought this was a due process and a constitutionally guaranteed jury trial. They gave him life without parole.
How did evil have the final say?
Seems to me as though our great nation had the final say, and that the jury's verdict represents everything that is great and powerful about our nation.
(Everyone notice blogger's bug? Jebus, what quality software.)
"That's not what the jury said."
I don't think they said anything involving this. They set out to make a just decision, not to get justice. Given the contraints put on them by the system I don't think their decision to let him live has much relationship with their ideas about what would have been just.
"And I have to believe they have the best tools to decide. They heard all the evidence."
The tools necessary to decide this aren't limited to evidence, though.
"Tristero asks, and I echo that request, would someone please explain what President Bush is saying?"
I guess he's saying this is just one battle in the war on terror.
Not fair. The people calling for him to be murdered and/or raped aren't thirsting for vengeance- they are thirsting for justice.
Is fair.
For the reason you're not getting (I think): The calls are conflating vengeance with justice--in fact, making the two concepts synonyms. They are not. They are not.
Those calling you and others out--oh, to hell with that.
I'm calling you out for exactly that reason. Because when the two are mushed together, the definition of "vengeance" takes over. Justice becomes a distinction without ethical meaning.
I'm no wimp on the concept of justice: In fact, I'm a defender of it on a different front, against the conflation of "justice" with "fairness." (No, I don't eschew fairness--I just don't automatically conflate the two things, damn it.)
But the sort of wishing exhibited here is a perversion of the concept of justice--precisely because it, well, justifies all sorts of things that subvert the very reason that justice is a noble goal to begin with.
And the rule of secular law.
And--meh, enough.
Beneath contempt? I don't think so. I think it's quite a human feeling if you choose to remember this: http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020909/aintro.html
What's curious is that all your moral indignation is reserved for people that M would have gladly killed, along with their babies, only because they were living or working in America, or on the wrong plane on the wrong day.
I hope I'm wrong, but this is weakness, and deadly. As someone else posted, how long before hostages are grabbed to barter for M? The fact that he was tried in a criminal instead of a military court is our fault, and we will have to live with the whirlwind caused by this mistaken guilt-ridden fashionable pseudo-pacifism.
What's curious is that all your moral indignation is reserved for people that M would have gladly killed, along with their babies, only because they were living or working in America, or on the wrong plane on the wrong day.
Wrong!--at least for me.
Human feeling is an important thing, but it's one thing.
Terrorists have human feelings--which justify whatever. Feelings are not justifications.
I realize I have not said this: I am not opposed to the death penalty categorically. In fact, I think it's appropriate--to my way of thinking, even obviously appropriate--in a number of circumstances.
Just for the record.
Hmm, perhaps not a bug after all, perhaps just a time delayed cachey thingy.
It was always foolish to see this as a matter of law.
I quite agree. But we made our bed, now let us lie in it.
True, balfegor, that's a better way of saying it.
With respect to the martyr issue, none of the jurors found his desire to be a martyr a reason to choose life imprisonment over death (read the verdict form, which is available at Bashman and elsewhere).
I had the chance to speak with an inmate whose death sentence was commuted to life in prison. According to her, she would have rather been put to death than spend her life in prison.
I hope Moussaoui enjoys his life and his new husband.
Rape is torture. Everyone who is happy to think of prisoners who are being raped is expressing approval of torture. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
I'm not terribly upset that he didn't get the death penalty. Yeah, I knew a fair handful of the people murdered on 9/11. Yeah, I'd like to see some AQ big shots publicly drawn and quartered, televised live on Fox and Al Jizz. But we stick with the rule of law and frankly the U.S.' case that he was a 9/11 conspirator, in the common sense of the word, wasn't particularly strong. He may have known about the attacks, but he seems far too much of a wingnut to have been relied on to carry out anything important. Maybe he knew, but knowledge alone is generally weak grounds on which to base a conspiracy conviction, an overt act in support of the conspiracy is generally required. From a merits standpoint, you need crazy people to carry out suicide attacks, but they can be stark raving nuts, and Moussaoui is starkers. And he claims that the deranged Richard Reid was to be his accomplice? Please.
I think the rule of law won yesterday. The war on Islamacist terror is going to be a long march. The goal for the U.S. and the west, insofar as the rest of the west cares to resist the Islamacist tide, must be to preserve those parts of our society that make us unique, including an almost fetishistic respect for the rule of law, because the law is the thing that pulled us out of the Western dark ages on a couple occasions. We can't chuck the law overboard just to inflict some(well deserved and just) retaliation on a member of the enemy camp. Just as the local magistrate and jail replaced the blood feud, so must our way of settling disputes replace suicide bombings and beheadings and chopping off hands. We don't get to that point, and bring the more radical portion of the Muslim world into our camp, if we don't adhere to the standards that we assert are superior.
I'm not saying the wish for revenge is defensible or desirable, but it is human. Which is why I said I was too harsh. I do not hope for such treatment for Moussaui; it would only illustrate what I fear the most, that we are a deluded nation, flattering ourselves that a lack of will to fight is really a virtue, while at the same time winking at those we disdain to do our dirty work for us. How cowardly!
A lot of you guys need more of a Zen warrior spirit -- kill the enemy or forget him, but do it coldly, without passion. All this foaming at the mouth sounds impotent, frankly. You've let the little shit get to you, drag you down to the level of a chimpanzee screaming and dung-flinging contest. That, far more than physical survival, is Moussaoui's triumph. Once he can do no harm, dead or alive, the way to destroy him is to ignore him.
All this foaming at the mouth sounds impotent, frankly.
You and I watch different movies.
Amba: Yeah, exactly. My local paper has the right headline: "Moussaoui denied martyrdom."
Madisonman: That was my impression too. Some folks like solitude! Imagine if they'd offered that punishment to the Unibomber!
Wait... I meant to agree with Mark, not Madisonman!
Al Maviva wrote: "The goal for the U.S. and the west, insofar as the rest of the west cares to resist the Islamacist tide, must be to preserve those parts of our society that make us unique, including an almost fetishistic respect for the rule of law, because the law is the thing that pulled us out of the Western dark ages on a couple occasions."
Thank you, Al. We do not win this fight by becoming what we despise.
"Is fair.
For the reason you're not getting (I think): The calls are conflating vengeance with justice--in fact, making the two concepts synonyms. They are not. They are not."
I don't think they are synonyms either. I don't think people are calling for him to be raped and/or murdered because they want to GET EVEN- which I think is an intrinsic part of revenge.
I think they are calling for him to raped/murdered because they think he DESERVES that, which I think is a call for justice.
That said, let me say again, and just for the record, that I don't think he should be raped, and I'm okay with life imprisonment.
Also, again, if you are okay with him being raped than you are okay with a rapist enjoying raping people. And that's no kind of punishment, much less a way to encourage someone to become a better person.
And really- I mean Saddam had rape rooms and such- just that association is enough for me to find the idea demeaning to the US.
Ann, did you read Dahlia Lithwick's take on the decision? Clear and well-written as (almost) always: Complex martyr
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