So, failed 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui gets life in prison, instead of the death penalty for his knowledge of the 9/11 hijacking plot, and the blogosphere steps back to reflect on what this all means.
PoliBlog writes a post that sums up what many Americans are likely thinking: they wouldn’t be sad to see the guy get the death sentence, but life in prison is no picnic, either. “One of the things that has troubled me to some degree about this case is that I often got the feeling that because Moussaoui was all we had in terms of someone to prosecute for 911, then perhaps more had been vested in him specifically than may have been warranted by the evidence,” a thought apparently shared by the jurors.
Kicking off a post by apologizing to its readers who likely wanted the death penalty, Right Wing Nuthouse writes that the jury “did a brave and noble thing by sparing the killer’s life. Their decision validates our justice system in a way that brings honor to our values and the system of justice that protects those values.
“No one should envy the jurors their task. And the fact that, in the end, they saw Moussaoui as a living, breathing human being and not some symbol of the terrible wrong done to us on 9/11 or as a stand-in for Osama Bin Laden speaks volumes about the careful and meticulous way the jury individually and as a group approached the penalty phase of the trial.”
Captain’s Quarters says that while he opposes the death penalty, “this case came close to being an exception for me.” CQ says that Moussaoui lost the case because “he either wanted to die as a martyr in an attack on America, or get away with an attack with his life and freedom intact. He did neither.” Had he been given death, CQ believes, he would have become “the new poster boy for American cruelty for our use of capital punishment… Now, however, he faces a very long time in prison and the gradual oblivion he deserves….He gets to live in a cage for decades, and die almost anonymously and unremarkably.”
Bloggedlygook writes that “I don’t care about Moussaoui’s life. And I am not particularly squeamish about the death penalty. But for death to have meaning, it must be reserved…We are a nation of law, and justice, by definition, has been done. Moussaoui’s blood is a proxy for that blood we wanted [on 9/11], but it isn’t the right blood to take. Moussaoui’s blood is an empty symbol that would have satisfied temporarily, but would have extracted a higher price from all of us. Better that American justice has demonstrated that it can discern the levels of guilt and complicity, that presidents do not dictate to courts, that we do not kill indiscriminately.”
Many others, however, are blaming the jury for letting Moussaoui live. The Counterterrorism blog thinks that the “verdict is a miscarriage of justice and a dangerous precedent. I am not a full-throated proponent of the death penalty, but Moussaoui should fry.” Finally, Tammy Bruce joins the chorus calling for their pound of flesh, writing, “The scum of Moussaoui does not deserve to live his life in any context. The moment he came here with the express intent of killing as many Americans as possible as an agent of al-Qaeida alone requires his execution. We’ve executed people on less in times of war, for spying, as an example, because of the potential harm their acts could elicit.”
This might just be us, but did you notice how the posts that seemed to actually put some thought into whether or not Moussaoui should have gotten the death penalty seemed to be, well, better written?
Such is the blogosphere.
Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.