SENTENCED.(Zacarias Moussaoui)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 15-MAY-06

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COPYRIGHT 2006 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Against the background of the chronic miasma of fear, tension, suffering, and sporadic but horrifying violence that envelops the world on account of Islamist fundamentalist terrorism and the reaction to it, the fate of Zacarias Moussaoui, the self-proclaimed, wanted-to-be, wasn't-there twentieth hijacker of September 11, 2001, is of relatively small moment. Nevertheless, a debt of gratitude is owed to the nine men and three women of the jury in Alexandria, Virginia, that, last Wednesday, declined to direct that Moussaoui be put to death. The calm seriousness with which these anonymous citizens approached their task has reassured many of us that our federal criminal-court system, even in the face of the extraordinary pressures generated by the exigencies (and the politics) of the "war on terror," remains capable of rendering justice in which sternness is guided by wisdom. And the jurors' civic courage has probably made all of us a little--only a little, but still--safer.

Moussaoui's case was a murky one. Of his criminal intentions there was never any doubt. He had toured...

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