Over the past week I have been buried in a project that I thought would never end but hopefully my long nightmare is over. With that said, I have had a little time to digest the life sentence that a federal jury in Alexandria, Va., handed Zacarias Moussaoui last week for his part in the 9/11 conspiracy.
It seems the government was disappointed Moussaoui will rot in the federal “Supermax” prison for the rest of his life. Prosecutors wanted the death penalty which means that if Moussaoui had been sentenced to death he would have been given the choice of lethal injection or electrocution (In federal cases, a defendant sentenced to death is executed under the method of the state in which the crime took place. In this case it was Virginia, location of the Pentagon.)
Since there is a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking on the Moussaoui trial’s outcome and because it is Monday morning, I thought I’d throw my in my 1.5 cents.
First of all, there are those of the opinion that the government case was overreaching and flawed. Others such as Dr. Brooks A. Mick of “The Conservative Voice” think the jury’s verdict was part of society’s mollycoddling in general. But still others, as with Goldilocks and the three bowls of porridge, found the sentence was just right.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t know what is legally sound here or what isn’t. But it seems to me that Moussaoui was portraying himself a winner no matter what the outcome. If he died he would be a martyr. If he gets life, he lives. That is, of course, if you can call how he will likely live the rest of his life, “life.”
Despite the government’s disappointment I also think they stood to win either way. No matter how much blood lust exists over the horrible events of Sept. 11, 2001, some will argue that life without parole is a much worse fate than death.
So no matter how much I loathe the term “win-win” (and believe me, I loathe the term), I cannot think of a better expression for all sides in the Moussaoui case. Isn’t there something wrong with this picture?