Moussaoui Eligible For Execution
A federal jury found al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui eligible Monday to be executed, deciding that his lies to FBI agents led directly to at least one death in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"You'll never get my blood, God curse you all," Moussaoui said afterward. He had sat in his chair and prayed silently as the verdict was read.
Even before the jury entered the courtroom around 4 p.m., Moussaoui seemed riled up, and more animated than usual. He could be heard chanting and yelling from behind an interior door, CBS' Stephanie Lambidakis reports.
The only person to face charges in this country in the nation's worst terrorist assault, Moussaoui now faces a second phase of his sentencing trial to determine if he actually will be put to death. That phase is to begin Thursday morning.
The nine men and three women of the jury will hear testimony on whether the 37-year-old Frenchman, who was in jail at the time of the attack, deserves to be executed for his role.
It was a total victory for the government. Any one "no" vote would have sent Moussaoui to prison for life and could have evaded a second trial, CBS News correspondent Jim Stewart reports.
The testimony will include families of 9/11 victims who will describe the human impact of the al Qaeda mission that flew four jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
Using models of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, family members are expected to illustrate where their loved ones were that day, Stewart reports. All the names of the victims of that attack will be read aloud and all of their pictures shown.
Court-appointed defense lawyers, whom Moussaoui has tried to reject, will summon experts to suggest he is schizophrenic after an impoverished childhood during which he faced racism in France over his Moroccan ancestry. He may be portrayed as someone who wants to die and gain fame in al Qaeda, according to Stewart.
"By this verdict, the jury has found that death is a possible sentence in this case," court spokesman Edward Adams said.
On the key question before the jurors, they answered yes on whether at least one victim died Sept. 11 as a direct result of Moussaoui's actions. Another was the value to the government of the information Moussaoui could have provided, says CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen.Watch the jury's decision being announced.
"By endorsing the link between a terror trainee who never contacted any of the 19 actual 9/11 hijackers ... the panel rejected defense claims that our government was so blind, deaf and dumb before 9/11 that it would not have been able to properly process information from Moussaoui no matter how dramatic his story might have been back then," Cohen said.
On the key question before the jurors, they answered yes on whether at least one victim died Sept. 11 as a direct result of Moussaoui's actions.
Rosemary Dillard, whose husband Eddie died in the attacks, said she felt a sense of vindication from the verdict.
"This man has no soul, has no conscience," she said of Moussaoui. "What else could we ask for but this?"
Abraham Scott, who lost his wife Janice Marie on 9/11, said: "I describe him like a dog with rabies, one that cannot be cured. The only cure is to put him or her to death."
He told CBS' Alison Harmelin that
But Scott said he blamed the government equally "for not acting on certain indicators that could have prevented 9/11 happening."
The jury began weighing Moussaoui's fate last Wednesday. During its deliberations, jurors asked only one question, seeking a definition of "weapon of mass destruction." One of the three convictions for which Moussaoui could be executed is conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.
The jurors were told that a plane used as a missile — the tactic employed on Sept. 11 — qualifies as a weapon of mass destruction.
Moussaoui pleaded guilty last April to conspiring with al Qaeda to hijack aircraft and other crimes. At the time, he denied being part of the 9/11 plot, saying he was being trained for a separate attack, but he changed his story when he took the stand and claimed he was to have flown a hijacked airliner into the White House that day.
Moussaoui was in jail at the time of the attacks, but prosecutors argue federal agents would have been able to thwart or at least minimize the attacks if he had revealed his al Qaeda membership and his terrorist plans when he was arrested and interrogated by federal agents.
The court proceeding took just nine minutes.
"The reading of the verdict was short and to the point," said CBS' Lambidakis. "The clerk asked the foreperson if the jury had reached a verdict, and she replied, 'yes,' in a soft voice."
Then U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema accepted the verdict from the forewoman and read it to the court. The clerk asked the defendant to rise just before she read it. Moussaoui remained seated, but his lawyers rose.
The judge said the jury was unanimous on all four aspects of each of the three counts against Moussaoui. Those counts were conspiracy to commit international terrorism, to destroy aircraft and to use weapons of mass destruction.
On each count, the jurors found the defendant was 18 or older at the time of the offense, intentionally lied to federal agents on Aug. 16-18, 2001, and did so "contemplating the life of a person would be taken or intending that lethal force would be used." Further, they determined at least one person died Sept. 11 as a direct result of the lies.
The judge asked the jurors if their verdicts were all unanimous, and all nodded affirmatively.
Neither the prosecution nor the defense wanted the jurors polled, Lambidakis reports.