Breaking: Moussaoui Gets LIFE

Idiots. There was, I think, one liberal son-of-a-bitch on the jury who lied to get on the jury and refused to endorse the appopriate sentence of death.

The article.

What the hell does one need to do, precisely, to earn the death penalty?

I mean, besides "outing" a superspy like Valerie Plame. Obviously that's a capital crime.

More... To get on a jury in a capital case, you have to be "death-qualified." You can't have any philosophical objection to the death penalty, that means. Because you have to judge the merits of imposing a capital sentence on the facts of the case and the law (which permits the death penalty), not on some external, pre-existing objection to the death penalty as a general matter.

My Pet Jawa links the questionnaire jurors were required to fill out to get on this jury impose the death penalty.

I wonder if Margie Brinkema made it a little harder than it should have been.

I made a mistake in saying Jawa had linked the questionnaire needed to get on the jury. He didn't; he linked the questions that had to be answered in the affirmative to give Moussaoui the death he deseves.

But, on the questionnaire, or the voir dire which occurred before this case:

Either one or two of the jurors lied, or Judge Brinkema let one or two in whose answers should have disqualified them.

I cannot imagine that anyone who is not against the death penalty in principle could find this a case in which the accused was not deserving of that punishment.

And the other jurors gave in, of course. They should have hung tough, and hung the jury.

Gee, I sure hope that his guards take special care of him in prison. It would be such a shame for him to be, I don't know, beaten to death with a pillowcase filled with batteries or something.

"Martyrdom" Considered A Mitigating Circumstance: Hot Air (Allah) says that at least one juror no jurors believed that denying Moussaoui martyrdom was a mitigating circumstance that weighed against death, which some bloggers seem to think.

Correction: Sorry, I read Allah's "none of the jurors" as "one of the jurors." No jurors, he says, considered the denial-of-martyrdom aspect a mitigating factor.

Allah also notes what I assumed-- this was not an unamimous decision; there were those who wanted death.

posted by Ace at 03:42 PM

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