Quote:Original post by The Frugal Gourmet I'm not exactly surprised or nonplussed with the verdict. I'm a little surprised that he didn't get what was considered the worst possible outcome considering he pledged to kill as many Americans as possible if freed. But, maybe the jury probably picked what *they* thought was the worst sentence.
After researching the case a bit more, I'm less enthusiastic about the outcome now.
Turns out that only 3 of the 12 jurors voted for life imprisonment, the other 9 voted for death.
In the US, death penalties require a unanimous decision.
So basically, 75% of the people decided that we should kill a guy who hasn't actually killed anyone, and was too stupid to actually do it if he even wanted to.
Brilliant.
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Quote:Original post by Mithrandir After researching the case a bit more, I'm less enthusiastic about the outcome now.
Turns out that only 3 of the 12 jurors voted for life imprisonment, the other 9 voted for death.
In the US, death penalties require a unanimous decision.
So basically, 75% of the people decided that we should kill a guy who hasn't actually killed anyone, and was too stupid to actually do it if he even wanted to.
Brilliant.
You're looking at this the wrong way. Rather, 25% of the people were smart enough not to kill someone who had little to no involvement, and was too stupid to actually do it even if he wanted too.
Yes, it sounds like a small number, but try thinking in baseball terms, where an excellent players fails 66% of the time. Honestly, 25% is a huge improvement in a situation the government was trying to fix for a death penalty. That shows a lot of hope.
Quote:Original post by CoffeeMug Honestly, if I was a juror on that case he would be a free man. I don't know if he is guilty or not, I am not familiar with the case, but I would call not guilty on one very simple principle: there is no way in hell this guy can receive a fair trial. May be in a Hague court, but not here.
No he wouldn't. He pled guilty and these court proceedings were about his sentence, not his guilt. In that sense, this show trial echoed those held by Stalin but in an inverted way. Instead of reinforcing the dominant ideology through the confession of the defendent, the reinforcement flows from the backlash against his tirades.
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Quote:Original post by LessBread He pled guilty and these court proceedings were about his sentence, not his guilt.
A shitty defense attorney, may be? Political pressure on the attorney to plead guilty? From what I heard about the case and from what my friends in law school tell me he should have been acquitted on almost every count. He didn't actually *do* anything. He's not guilty of conspiring to do anything because he didn't take any action towards the criminal goal. He didn't report a crime about to take place but from what I've been told there is no federal law requiring this. May be some state law, but life in prison?
Quote:Original post by LessBread In that sense, this show trial echoed those held by Stalin but in an inverted way.
Quote:Original post by Mithrandir So basically, 75% of the people decided that we should kill a guy who hasn't actually killed anyone, and was too stupid to actually do it if he even wanted to.
Brilliant.
I think they were supposed to accept the premise that the guy was indirectly responsible for 9/11 (this was established in a previous trial) and make a decision based on that.
Quote:Original post by Mithrandir So basically, 75% of the people decided that we should kill a guy who hasn't actually killed anyone, and was too stupid to actually do it if he even wanted to.
Brilliant.
I think they were supposed to accept the premise that the guy was indirectly responsible for 9/11 (this was established in a previous trial) and make a decision based on that.
Except for the fact that there's more evidence showing that he had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 than evidence showing that he had anything to do with it (which is, to date, exactly 0).
But the guy pled guilty to it, so what are we going to do?
The whole ordeal was just mind-numbingly stupid, but I'm glad that we didn't set a precedent that allowed people to be executed based on inaction.
Think about how insane that would be. You could be executed because you DIDN'T do something... wow. I'm speechless that some people actually support that.
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Quote:Original post by Mithrandir So basically, 75% of the people decided that we should kill a guy who hasn't actually killed anyone, and was too stupid to actually do it if he even wanted to.
He conspired to commit mass murder though. Or, so he claimed.
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Quote:Original post by The Frugal Gourmet He conspired to commit mass murder though.
No he didn't. A legal definition of conspiracy requires taking some action to aid the conspiracy. He took no such action.
Quote:Original post by The Frugal Gourmet Or, so he claimed.
So if I claim I killed 50 people and cannot point investigators to anything whatsoever I should be executed? What if there is a high probability that I was forced to make that claim? What if I sound mentally ill to a reasonable observer?
I'm not saying the guy is sane. I'm just saying he had the capability and the desire to hurt as many people as possible. And that he was planning on it. From wiki:
Quote:He was taken into custody by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on August 16, 2001 after attending a flight school in Eagan, Minnesota
Quote:Moussaoui initially stated that he was not involved in the September 11 attacks, but that he was planning an attack of his own
Also, he's not quite a high school dropout.
Quote:He holds a master's degree in International Business from South Bank University in London
Does anybody not find it a little disturbing that he was arrested before Sep 11th, as part of the FBI's operation to catch terrorists training at flight schools.. just like the hijackers of 9/11? An operation that the FBI had going since the early 90s? An operation that caused the FBI to send out a memo in July (A month before Moussaoui's arrest) to the nation to investigate flight schools around the nation and specifically warned New York of an al-qaeda threat? and the fact that the same month Moussaoui was arrested, Bush was warned that Osama was determined to strike in the US? And that security was loosened during this time? And anti-terror funding was cut?
Now, I don't believe in the conspiracy theory that Bush knew and let it happen/wanted it to happen/planned it/etc/etc but the details of Moussaoui just make the screw-up that was 9/11 worse.
(Note, I'm just going to give my theory on things, please don't treat it as me spouting fact, it's all my opinion from what I've read on psychology and my observations.)
This isn't exclusive to the US but seems a character of the west, but it seems to be part of our collective consciousness that we're invincible and nobody would dare strike us. And because of this, we refuse to believe that some random nobodies with wire-cutters could come in and hit us hard.
We seem to treat terrorists as comicbook supervillains who sit in their secret caves and somehow use their terrorist powers to sneak in and hit us hard. This is exactly what Osama wants and exactly why terrorists scare us so much. And so by 'proving that we have the power to hit the infidels!!' terrorists win, you fear them and they get the idea that they're supervillains.
I think that's why Moussaoui was needed. He's the scapegoat. In the old Jewish sense of the word where they'd ritually put all their sins/blame/etc on the goat. By putting him away/killing him, you let yourself keep the collective idea that you're invincible and the terrorists won't get you. That sort of groupthink leads to you putting your guard down and it happening again. By putting all the blame on Moussaoui, 'If he would have told us, the supervillains would have never got away with their plot!', you get to absolve yourself of the blame. You get to avoid the fact that you're extremely vunerable and you don't fix the failures on *every level* that led to September 11th. By putting him away, you've also inflated the threat of terrorists, which compounds it.
Everybody failed leading up to that day. The FBI failed, the CIA failed, the President failed, Airport security failed, etc, etc. 'But let's not play the blame game, nobody had any idea!'
Moussaoui was right at the end. You've lost. The whole west has lost. Until we get out of the psychology that we're invincible.
Then we put in sane security measures and always be on our toes.
Just my 2c over the obsession about getting a guy who was a nobody with big ideas.
