DLR Group

Zacarias Moussoui flew by private jet today from Alexandria, Virginia to the Supermax (AdMax) at Florence, Colorado, the most secure prison in the country.

He will spend his days alone in a 8 by 10 or 7 × 12 foot cell, in 23 hour a day isolation. His meals will be delivered through a slot in his cell door. The shower will be brought to his cell. His one hour a day of exercise will be with a guard, not other inmates. He will have no contact with other inmates.

Zacarias Moussaoui filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea (pdf) today. He said that he did not trust his lawyers or the American jury system so he pleaded guilty to being a member of al Qaeda . He maintains he was not a part of the 9/11 conspiracy, didn't know the the details, and was to be part of a later plot against the U.S. This is what he has maintained all along, even on the day he pleaded guilty. The AP reports on the motion here.

Now that he has reviewed the jury's verdict, Moussaoui says he understands that he can receive a fair trial by American jurors, that they are able to put aside their disgust for him and their emotions and judge his case fairly.

Judge Lonnie Brinkema has already denied the motion (pdf) on procedural grounds:

Defendant's Motion to Withdraw must be summarily denied on the basis of Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(e) which provides that "[a]fter the court imposes sentence, the defendant may not withdraw a plea of guilty or nolo contendere, and the plea may be set aside only on direct appeal or collateral attack." Because defendant was
sentenced on May 4, 2006, his motion is too late and must be denied.

Here is the statement of facts which Moussaoui agreed to during his guilty plea hearing.

by TChris

This question has occurred to many:

"They say a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich. I'm beginning to wonder if a regular jury will convict it," the 49-year-old Queens man said.

The question was posed by David Lipshultz, a juror in the trial of Osama Awadallah. The perjury trial ended with a hung jury yesterday. Lipschultz was the only juror who refused to convict. Today he explains his reasoning:

Zacarias Moussaoui gave a political lecture at his sentencing today. He mocked victims who spoke, saying the U.S. is hardly the country of peace and love. He said the U.S. lost an opportunity to find out why people like him and Mohammad Attah hate America so much, and if we won't listen, we will feel it..again, they will be back. Of course, there was a "long live Osama." (no link yet, I heard this all on tv.)

The Judge told him that his comment yesterday about winning was wrong, that everyone in the courtroom will be free today to leave and go where they want, smell the fresh air, see the sunlight, and he will be locked in a tiny supermaximum prison cell.

He is going to Supermax at Florence, the media doesn't know when since that's up to the Bureau of Prisons. I remember that after McVeigh's sentencing, he was on his way to Florence either that day or the next. Of course, Denver is a lot closer to Florence but still, now that Moussaoui has been sentenced, I think they will get him out of Virginia very quickly.

Bump and Update: (TL) I just got to my destination. When the driver turned on the radio in the car leaving the airport, I asked about Moussaoui. He told me the jury came back with life and I shouted "Yes!" and threw my arm up in the air. I proceeded to tell him for the next 20 minutes how proud I was of the defense team in this case and what they had to work against -- not only the investment of the country in a death verdict to retaliate against someone for 9/11 -- but their own client who hated them and not only wouldn't assist them, but tried to sabotage them at every turn. Their dedication and professionalism is astounding. I've read every public filing in the case and they did such an incredible job for this crazy, bumbling holy warrior.

I then launched into a lecture about what was facing Moussaoui when he got to Supermax in Florence, where he will spend the rest of his days. Then we listened to the news and I heard that Moussaoui's words after the verdict were something like "America Lost, I Won" and I said to the driver, "He'll eat those words when he gets to Florence." It's not called Alcatraz of the Rockies for nothing. Without lawyers visiting him and sending him pleadings to read, and with virtually no human contact, lights shining on 24/7 as his every move in his tiny, windowless cell is monitored (at least for the first few months), he'll realize he got the short end of the stick pretty quickly.

by TChris

A juror in the trial of Hamid Hayat regrets her vote to convict. Arcelia Lopez swore in an affidavit that she was pressured to put an end to the jury's deliberations by casting the final vote to return a guilty verdict. Lopez said she "never once throughout the deliberation process and the reading of the verdict believed Hamid Hayat to be guilty."

Lopez said she went to a medical clinic Saturday with a migraine headache and believed "my health and physical well-being were being affected by the pressure from the other jurors to change my vote."

It isn't unusual for jurors to succumb to pressure -- jurors don't like to spend days in a small room eating stale pizza -- and it's almost impossible to overcome a verdict with the testimony of a juror who has second thoughts about the outcome. This report, however, suggests that the jury may have been exposed to media accounts of the trial -- the kind of extraneous influence that would provide a more fruitful ground for attacking the verdict.

The jury retired today without reaching a verdict in the death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui.

The jury asked to have a dictionary in the deliberation room. The request was denied and properly so. Extraneous materials are not allowed in the jury room.

What could they have wanted to look up? Check out the 42 page verdict form. (pdf)

Here's our last post on closing arguments and what the jury will have to decide.

The jury began deliberating whether Zacarias Moussaoui should get the death penalty or life in prison without parole at 2:26 pm today. After the prosecution's argument asking for death,

Defense lawyer Gerald Zerkin countered that Moussaoui's contempt for the victims and the trial "is proof that he wants you to sentence him to death. He is baiting you into it. He came to America to die in jihad and you are his last chance."

Zerkin said the jury can instead "confine him to a miserable existence until he dies and give him not the death of a jihadist ... but the long slow death of a common criminal."

by TChris

For whatever reason, Zacarias Moussaoui testified that he had planned to fly a plane into the White House on Sept. 11 with Richard Reid. That testimony made no sense, as the government agreed today. Moussaoui's lawyers and the prosecution stipulated that this evidence would be placed before the jury in the death penalty phase of Mousaoui's trial:

"There is no information to indicate that Richard Reid had preknowledge of the 9/11 attacks or was instructed by al-Qaeda leadership to conduct an operation in coordination with Moussaoui." The document pointed out that Reid had left his possessions to Moussaoui in his will before Reid mounted a separate attack in December 2001 in which he tried to blow up a transatlantic flight with a bomb in his shoe.

"In the opinion of the FBI," the document said "if Reid was to be part of the same martyrdom operation as Moussaoui, it is unlikely he would have bequeathed his possessions to Moussaoui."

Update: (TL): The New York Times reports on the Government's concession that Reid was not involved here.

by TChris

After the FBI arrested Hamid Hayat and his father Umer, President Bush declared that their arrests were part of the government's effort to "bust up these terrorist networks." Ten months later, as separate juries deliberate at the end of their trials, residents of Lodi are unconvinced that there was ever a terrorist cell in their midst. (Additional TalkLeft background is here.)

"I think people have gone 'Oh, it turned out not to be a big deal. It turned out not to be a terrorist cell,'" Mayor Susan Hitchcock said.

The government's fear-mongering was based on the word of -- you guessed it -- a less-than-credible informant.

Bump and Update: More Moussaoui testimony today:

Confessed al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui said Thursday it made his day to hear accounts of Americans' suffering from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and he would like to see similar attacks "every day."

He mocked the military witnesses at his trial for crying.

"I think it was disgusting for a military person" to cry, Moussaoui said of the testimony of Navy Lt. Nancy McKeown. "She is military, she should expect people at war with her to want to kill her." Asked if he was happy to hear her sobbing, he said, "Make my day."

He said he hopes the attacks on America continue.

Moussaoui said he had "no regret, no remorse" about the 9/11 attacks. Asked by prosecutor Rob Spencer if he would like to see it happen again, Moussaoui responded: "Every day until we get you."

And he expects Bush will release him before the end of Bush's term and he'll return to London.

Not only will TSA attorney Carla Martin have to face the Judge in the Zacarias Moussaoui trial over her bizarre conduct that nearly derailed the death penalty trial, but she has now been sued by families of the 9/11 victims for interfering in the civil lawsuit.

Martin "interfered with plaintiffs' right to fair trial," the families' suit alleges, by having "tampered with witnesses and evidence" in the Moussaoui case. The lawsuit alleges Martin "colluded and/or conspired" with representatives of American and United airlines, defendants in a civil action brought by 90 September 11 families in New York. These families opted out of the government's $7 billion victim-compensation fund so they could sue the airlines.

Background here.