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Lone juror jkept moussaoui alive { May 13 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002991044_mouss13.htmlhttp://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002991044_mouss13.html
Saturday, May 13, 2006 - Page updated at 12:00 AM
Lone juror kept Moussaoui alive
By Timothy Dwyer
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Only one juror stood between the death penalty and Zacarias Moussaoui and that juror frustrated his colleagues because he never explained his vote, according to the forewoman of the jury that sentenced the al-Qaida operative to life in prison last week.
The forewoman, a Virginia math teacher, said the panel voted 11-1, 10-2 and 10-2 in favor of the death penalty on three terrorism charges for which Moussaoui was eligible for execution. A unanimous vote on any would have resulted in a death sentence.
The forewoman said she had voted for the death penalty because the government had proved its case.
The forewoman said deliberations reached a critical point on the third day, when the process nearly broke down. Frustrations built because of repeated 11-1 votes on one charge without any dissenting arguments during discussions.
All ballots were anonymous, and the other jurors were relying on the discussions to identify the holdout.
"I would have to say that most of the arguments we heard around the deliberation table were" in favor of the death penalty, the forewoman said.
Another juror interviewed by The Washington Post said he voted for life in prison because he thought that Moussaoui's role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was marginal.
The forewoman said deliberations broke off April 26 when one juror questioned why they should take another vote.
The next day a juror called in sick, and there were no deliberations. That Friday, the jury returned. The forewoman told the group that she wanted to send a note to U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema stating that the jury was "not holding deliberations in the true sense of deliberations because the con arguments were not being thrown out on the table so we could investigate them as a group."
She said the jurors decided the whole group would raise anti-death-penalty issues because that way the lone dissenter would not feel isolated or "ganged up on." Deliberations continued, but the forewoman said the lone dissenter did not raise issues. Jurors delivered their decision to Brinkema three days later.
The forewoman said that at the end of the deliberations, she felt better about the process but not the outcome.
"I felt frustrated," she said, "because I felt that many of us had been cheated by the anonymity of the 'no' voter. We will never know their reason. We will never be able to hold their reason up to the light and the scrutiny of evidence, fact and law."
Brinkema ordered that the identities of the jurors be withheld for security reasons. The forewoman contacted The Post, and the interview was conducted on the condition of anonymity by a reporter who recognized her from the trial.
Moussaoui, 37, the only person convicted in the United States in connection with the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, pleaded guilty last year to taking part in a broad al-Qaida conspiracy to crash planes into U.S. buildings.
Moussaoui, a French citizen, testified that he had planned to fly a fifth hijacked airplane into the White House on Sept. 11.
The forewoman said Moussaoui's testimony, although dramatic, had little impact on deliberations in either phase of the sentencing trial. In the first phase, the jury found that he was eligible for the death penalty. In the second, the panel could not agree on a death sentence, so Moussaoui automatically was sentenced to life in prison.
"Most of the jurors didn't give much weight to Moussaoui's testimony in the first part or the second part," she said. "Though I gathered from his second testimony that he really didn't want the death penalty. I gathered that from a few comments he made."
The jurors did not believe the defense team's argument that Moussaoui was suffering from mental illness, the forewoman said, but they thought some of his actions, including volunteering to testify for the prosecution, were "bizarre."
But bizarre behavior does not equal mental illness, she said. "We did not put any credence in that," she said. "That was a given. ... I think most of us found Moussaoui to be intelligent, smart, crafty and a great manipulator. Those were the comments that were frequently thrown around the table."
She said jurors found that Moussaoui was eligible for the death penalty after the trial's first phase because they decided that at least part of the Sept. 11 attacks could have been prevented if he had not lied to the FBI after he was arrested in August 2001.
"We were very exacting. We were very careful," she said. "And I think because of the emotional nature of 9/11 that we went out of our way to be driven by evidence, facts and inferences beyond reasonable doubt."
Moussaoui, meanwhile, on Friday appealed his life sentence and the denial of his request for a new trial.
In a one-paragraph notice of appeal, his court-appointed lawyers said Friday he wanted the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the final judgment and sentence he received May 4 and Brinkema's denial Monday of his request to withdraw his guilty plea and go to trial on the original charges.
The notice contained no legal arguments about the case; those will be filed later with the appeals court.
Legal experts give Moussaoui little chance for success at the appellate level.
Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
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