Posted by Johnnymac 10:53 AM
I'll answer Junell's post with one of my own -

The guy didn't get the death penalty because he didn't deserve it and it would have made him out to be more than he actually was. Don't get me wrong, I think he is scum and that he deserves to die, but I don't think our government should be the one who kills him. I think he was being made out as a scapegoat for political and emotional reasons.

I understand how conspiracy laws work and I understand that he could have told the FBI what he knew and that perhaps that information might have prevented the attacks, but from what I understand he was never a direct participant in the plot and the information he possessed was only circumstantially related to the attacks. He knew two of the other pilots who participated in the attacks, but it cannot be proven that he actually knew the exact plans beyond, "someday we're going to hijack jetliners and fly them into the World Trade Center," mostly because not even all of the actual participants in the plot knew all of the details of dates and flight numbers and the names of the other participants, etc etc.

The guy is guilty of being Al-Qaeda and the guy is clearly a bad dude, but that doesn't mean the US Government should give him the ultimate punishment we can give. Some people deserve the death penalty: Tookie Williams deserved to die, Timothy McVeigh deserved to die, Rafael Reséndiz deserves to die and will be executed someday soon. In fact, I personally think we need *more* sentences of the death penalty rather than less of it, and more speedy executions, too, but I do not think Moussaoui deserves it because he was not directly responsible for those deaths on 9/11. The best thing we can do is lock him up in jail and throw away the key and forget about him.

He deserves to be punished and the world probably would be a better place if he were gone, but we cannot sentence someone to death on such tenuous grounds. I know that the families on 9/11 are wanting some revenge and that the Bush Administration *needed* to have this guy on death row for politicial reasons, but that doesn't make the standard of proof or the seriousness of the crimes he did commit any less important factors in our juctice system. All he is guilty of is being involved with the guys who planned and executed 9/11 but he didn't know what exactly was going on and he wasn't one of the attackers and thus he is not directly responsible for what happened.

The guy is going to be locked up in the Supermax prison in Colorado and from what I understand, living in that place is awful. He is going to be punished, and he is going to be punished in a way that I personally feel is consistent with his actual crimes.

3 Comment(s):

Posted by  Junelli, at 5:31 PM, May 04, 2006  

At over $50,000 per year, I say just give him the needle and make the cell available to a more worthy candidate!!

Unfortunately, he won't get to toss many salads, because the prison involves up to 23-hour per day, single-cell confinement.
Inmates in supermax housing have minimal contact with staff and other inmates.

And in reference to the actual evidence against him:

He pleaded guilty to conspiracy in connection with the hijackings. He couldn't participate directly on 9/11, because he was in jail on that day because of suspicions he raised during flight school. He is an admitted terrorist and member of Al Queda.

In my humble opinion, we should release him into the general prison population. They'll take care of him.

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Posted by  Dr Fro, at 7:47 AM, May 05, 2006  

On a political / diplomatic side, we would have lost a lot of credibility that would have come in handy the next time an American chewed gum in Singapore or looked at porn in Saudi Arabia.

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Posted by  Junelli, at 11:45 AM, May 05, 2006  

Don't lie, it's your secret wish to be caned by Malaysian authorities.

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