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Justice Department to Seek Death Penalty Against Moussaoui

Aired March 28, 2002 - 14:25   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: He is considered by some within law enforcement to be the suspected 20th hijacker. Now, the Justice Department plans to seek the death penalty if it gets a conviction against Zacarias Moussaoui. Let's go to our New York bureau and Deborah Feyerick now, who's watching that case. Deborah, good afternoon.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Bill. Well, France says it regrets the U.S. decision in seeking the death penalty, and that officials want to continue pursuing discussions on the subject, in the spirit of cooperation.

The statement by Hubert Vedrine, the foreign minister, also says France remains in solidarity with the United States and its fight against terrorism. Moussaoui is a French citizen of Moroccan descent. He's allegedly the missing hijacker, the 20th man possibly destined to be on the one flight that had four, not five, hijackers.

Attorney General John Ashcroft, after reviewing the government's case, including victim impact statements, according to a source, says the death penalty is appropriate. And he hopes the international community will respect the decision.

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JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL: You know, there are a number of governments around the world who have reservations about capital punishment, so that in individual cases, where capital punishment is a possibility, they do not participate in those cases.

The United States of America is a sovereign nation, whose representatives in the United States Congress have chosen to mark the seriousness of certain crimes indelibly, by indicating that those crimes should be death eligible in certain circumstances. We ask our counterparts in the international community to respect our sovereignty, and we respect theirs.

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FEYERICK: One defense attorney who had a role in the U.S. embassy bombings trial feels this could become a big issue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DAVID RUHNKE, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: It's true even in these terrorism cases, where people are arrested in Europe, for example, and our European allies say, we will not extradite, if you pursue the death penalty. I mean, you take Moussaoui. Had he been arrested in France, where he is from, he would unlikely be -- he would likely not be facing the death penalty today. Because France wouldn't have extradited him unless the United States agreed to back off the death penalty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FEYERICK: In the notice seeking the death penalty, prosecutors planning to prove even though Moussaoui was already behind bars at the time of the attacks, he knew people would die because of what he allegedly planned to do: carrying out, the government says -- quote -- "an especially heinous, cruel and depraved manner," and that they involved the torture and serious physical abuse to the victim.

Three-thousand people died in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Thousands more suffering from the physical scars of having survived, or the emotional wounds of losing loved ones. This is expected to go to trial in October -- Bill.

HEMMER: Deborah, thank you. Deborah Feyerick in New York. And the government, again, wants him to pay with his life. Ruth Wedgewood is with Yale University and Johns Hopkins University. She specializes in international law and international studies. She's live in Champaign, Illinois, to talk about this.

Good afternoon. One of the reasons we wanted you on is because historically you have fought against the death penalty, but in this case you support it. Based on the evidence of the crime, tell us why.

RUTH WEDGEWOOD, YALE UNIVERSITY: Well, I've been ambivalent about the death penalty earlier in my career. I never professionally engaged in it. But when I was clerking in the Supreme Court, I'm not sure what I thought.

In this case, I think you could have a man who -- though it's called conspiracy, was involved in a plot that really amounted to his procuring the deaths of people on the airplanes and people in the building. It's really a specific, intent crime. It's not a crime of negligence. It's a crime of intention.

HEMMER: How do prosecutors get a death penalty for someone who was not there?

WEDGEWOOD: Well, if I'm the coppo in an organized crime family, and I tell my food soldier to do something, I have committed the crime as much as if I, myself, pulled the trigger. And that's the nature of conspiracy. It's a conspiracy to commit a particular crime. And you and another fellow, to a hundred. The very nature of al Qaeda is to plan assaults on civilian targets.

HEMMER: How strong is the evidence in this case? WEDGEWOOD: Well, I think when people are wondering why it was going to civilian court, as opposed to a military commission, one answer was that the rules on the commissions weren't ready yet. But another answer is that it appears the government has a pretty good portfolio of, what is circumstantial evidence. But circumstantial, in toto, can be quite strong, if you look at the interlinking of the parts. So there are a lot of things that Moussaoui did that make no sense, except in the context of this plot.

HEMMER: I've heard from some legal analysts, who suggest that it is no time to commit a crime in this country. Andrea Yates comes to mind. Marjorie Knoller, the dog-mauling case in California. Would you agree with that? Are jurors being tougher post 9-11, or is it simply coincidence?

WEDGEWOOD: I think those are apples and oranges. I do think there's perhaps a sense that the kind of crime that al Qaeda has been involved in, where the leveraging of violence so huge, where one person, 10 people, can cause catastrophic harm -- that there, we have to be much more attune to trying to prevent this stuff early and taking the charges very seriously, and investing the necessary resources in prosecution.

HEMMER: And, does it surprise you right now, 3,000 dead. He is the only person charged directly to this point. What does that suggest about the way al Qaeda operated and carried this out?

WEDGEWOOD: Well, the real problem with al Qaeda is that it's not a deterable bunch of people. If you have a cult of martyrdom, then all the normal premises of criminal law don't apply very well. Because you usually suppose, in criminal prosecutions, that if you prosecute enough people, the others will be chilled. And here, with a cult of martyrdom, you really have to find every member of al Qaeda and lock them up, and prosecutor them or detain them as combatants.

HEMMER: There's an image running through my mind, when the court case gets under way in the fall, as Deborah Feyerick reported. When you have victims' families come into that courtroom and testify. That could be severely damaging to the defense.

WEDGEWOOD: Well, jurors are told to look at the evidence before them. The fact a crime was committed doesn't necessarily mean that a particular person was involved in it. And they take their oath as jurors very seriously.

But certainly, insofar as jurors have sympathy by nature -- as being human beings, with the defendant human who sits before them, seeing the victims has an impact.

HEMMER: Some people say let the punishment fit the crime. Or, in this case, there are those who believe that people like Zacarias Moussaoui may have wanted to die anyway. So then, what is the sense in giving him the death penalty? I'm curious to know how that may play, out in your estimation, next fall?

WEDGEWOOD: They want to die on their own terms. I don't think they necessarily want to be executed after a judgment of moral and legal condemnation. But I do think, if I might say, in regard to the French connection to this case, that the -- while many European countries are against the death penalty, if you look at Europe's own law, their own convention on human rights, and it's protocol on the death penalty, protocol No. 6. It makes an exception for wartime. There's nothing in European law that precludes the death penalty in war time.

HEMMER: Which would include the French then in this case, you're saying.

WEDGEWOOD: Indeed. And more to the point, I think the French are going to be shooting themselves, quite literally, in the foot. Because if they decline to cooperate in the investigation of prosecution of Moussaoui, it means that they're just not going to be running down people who are still on their own soil.

And France has a very large community of emigrants from North Africa, most of whom are -- almost all of whom are innocent. But they have -- many of the European countries that have thick privacy laws are known now to have harbored al Qaeda cells. So it's in France' self-interest, ultimately, to cooperate in this case.

HEMMER: True point. Ruth Wedgewood, thanks for making time, Champaign, Illinois, live with us today. Many thanks. We'll talk again.

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