Moussaoui Jurors Choose Life

The Bush administration's four-year crusade to kill Zacarias Moussaoui for whatever role he played in the September 11 attacks ended Wednesday when the jury declared Moussaoui will live. Seekers of vengeance are furious that the jury did not opt for death. But the verdict reveals that justice has been done.

Moussaoui, a mentally ill wannabe terrorist, pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in connection with the 9/11 attacks. At his sentencing hearing, the jury heard heart-wrenching testimony that brought the reality of September 11 into the courtroom. Prosecutors were confident the jury would say that Moussaoui must die to avenge the worst terrorist attack on US soil in our history.

The jury struggled for seven days before deciding Moussaoui would spend the rest of his life in prison. Jurors could not agree that Moussaoui caused the deaths of nearly 3,000 people. Nine of the 12 jurors considered the circumstances of Moussaoui's early life to be mitigating factors. His father physically and emotionally abused his family, and Moussaoui spent much of his childhood in orphanages.

Perhaps most significant was the testimony of family members of the 9/11 victims. Twelve testified for the defense. Although the rules forbade them from telling the jury that they favored life over death for Moussaoui, their intent was clear. This is the first time victim family members who oppose capital punishment have ever testified in a federal death penalty trial.

These family members gave the jury permission to let Moussaoui live.

Although they did not speak out during the trial, they are now expressing relief at the jury's verdict.

Robin Theurkauf, whose husband died in the World Trade Center, testified for the defense. A divinity student at Yale, Theurkauf said, "We may have given them [the jurors] permission to free themselves from an obligation to respond to the massive grief with vengeance. We allowed them to view the case dispassionately."

"More than anyone, we understand why the jury chose the sentence they did," said Terry Rockefeller, whose sister Laura Rockefeller was in the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. "As a long-time opponent of the death penalty, a belief even this devastating personal tragedy has not altered, I am relieved by the jury's decision not to sentence Zacarias Moussaoui to death." Rockefeller is a member of the Board of Directors of Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation.

Antonio Aversano also testified for the defense. His father, Louis Aversano Jr., was a World Trade Center victim. Aversano believes "that our best personal defense against terrorism is to not let the fear and hatred of terror consume our lives but to take whatever steps are necessary to reclaim our hearts, to honor each other and to live life well."

Other family members also spoke of the importance of modeling a compassionate society for our children.

"Beyond the verdict in this trial, I oppose using the death penalty to demonstrate to citizens that murder is so wrong that we will kill to prove it wrong," said Patricia Perry. Her son John William Perry was a member of the New York Police Department who died at the World Trade Center. "State killing teaches our children that we do not mean what we say and inures us as a society to the horror of killing."

Loretta Filipov's husband Al was on the first plane to the hit the World Trade Center. She feels that "killing Zacarias Moussaoui will not bring my husband back. It will not change the life my family and I now have without my husband and their father. But what killing will do," she said, "is to continue the cycle of violence, hate and revenge. This is not the face we want for our future, for our children and grandchildren."

Both Andrea LeBlanc and her husband Robert, who was a passenger on the second plane that crashed into the World Trade Center, opposed the death penalty. "For me, now, this particular case is no exception," she said. "Violence takes many forms and killing another human being will never undo the harm that has been done." LeBlanc observed, "Killing Zacarias Moussaoui would not have helped us understand those things that lead to 9/11. Nor would it have helped create the kind of compassionate world I want to live in."

After Judge Leonie Brinkema pronounced the official sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for Zacarias Moussaoui, she told him he would "die with a whimper" without ever speaking publicly again.

Moussaoui got the worst of the two possible punishments, in the opinion of Abraham J. Bonowitz, co-founder and director of Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. Now that Moussaoui has been sentenced, he "will be effectively silenced, and he'll lose the soapbox that he would have gotten if he were sent to death row." Bonowitz noted that Moussaoui "also loses the power to sustain the pain of victims' families - a fact seemingly lost on the pro-deathies of the world."

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Scapegoats in Terror War

The Moussaoui jury today enters its fifth day of deliberations on whether to execute the self-avowed conspirator in the September 11 attacks. After hours of graphic testimony and videotapes of the horrors on 9/11, as well as Moussaoui's confession, this should have been an open-and-shut case.

Yet the jury cannot ignore the fact that Zacarias Moussaoui is a paranoid schizophrenic. Moussaoui testified that he and would-be shoe-bomber Richard Reid were slated to fly a fifth airplane into the White House on September 11. But the FBI admitted there was no evidence that Reid had prior knowledge of 9/11, or that al-Qaeda had told him to work with Moussaoui.

Defense psychologist Xavier Amador testified that Moussaoui has firmly held delusional beliefs that George W. Bush will free him from prison and that his attorneys are conspiring to kill him.

In fact, Bush is surely delighted that it is Moussaoui, and not the real culprits responsible for the 9/11 attacks, who is on trial. If Bush's hired gun Alberto Gonzales were to charge Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or Mohammad al-Qahtani, both now in US custody, with crimes for their responsibility for those attacks, their statements would be inadmissible, because they were obtained by torture. Mohammed is the reputed mastermind of 9/11 and al-Qahtani is the alleged "20th hijacker."

So the best the Bush administration can do to seek justice is to prosecute a mentally ill marginal bit player who was in a Minnesota jail on September 11, 2001.

This is not the first time Team Bush has hidden behind a scapegoat.

Even though the prosecution had no direct evidence tying the Lackawanna Six to terrorist crimes, all six defendants pleaded guilty to crimes that brought them 6 1/2 years to 9 years in prison. The attorney general had threatened to charge them with being "enemy combatants" and ship them to Guantánamo, to be held indefinitely, with no trials and no access to lawyers or courts.

Bush & Co. has suffered a string of defeats in the "terror" cases it has attempted to prosecute.

Last year, a Florida jury acquitted a former professor charged with supporting Palestinian groups. The year before, an Idaho jury refused to convict a college student accused of aiding terrorists in Chechnya and Israel.

An Oregon lawyer arrested by the FBI two years ago was released after being held in custody for nearly three weeks. The FBI had linked him to the Madrid train bombings with a faulty fingerprint identification.

And a judge reversed the convictions of two Detroit men arrested the week after September 11, 2001, for planning a terrorist incident. The prosecutor had covered up the fact that its key witness admitted lying to the FBI.

After Jose Padilla had languished in custody with no charges for nearly three years, Bush finally charged him with a conspiracy unrelated to 9/11 or the "dirty bombing" that former Attorney General John Ashcroft had ceremoniously proclaimed shortly after Padilla's arrest. Afraid the Supreme Court would slap down the president for designating US citizens "enemy combatants," the Department of Justice sought to pre-empt an unfavorable ruling by charging Padilla with a crime.

On Friday, a federal judge rejected requests by the Justice Department to further limit the defense's use of the secret evidence the prosecution plans to employ against Padilla.

What about the so-called Bush "victory" in prosecuting Hamid Hayat of Lodi, California? The day after the jury's guilty verdict last week, one of the jurors said she had never believed that Hayat was guilty, and that she was pressured by other jurors into changing her vote. The case against Hayat relied on a paid FBI informant whose credibility was undermined at trial and on statements made by Hayat without his lawyer present. The interrogations were conducted in English, which Hayat does not fully understand. Hayat's lawyers said that detectives used leading questions and his statements were made under duress.

Hayat was prosecuted for providing material support to terrorists by attending a training camp in Pakistan. But the government presented no evidence that Hayat had planned or participated in any terrorist act, or that he had ever been in Pakistan.

Moreover, the material support statute under which Hayat was convicted has twice been declared unconstitutionally vague by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, because it does not require proof of any overt act.

The federal judge who presided over Hayat's case declared a mistrial in the case of Hayat's father, who had been charged with lying to investigators in order to conceal his son's actions. After eight days of deliberations, jurors were unable to agree on his guilt.

Georgetown University law professor David Cole affirmed, "The government in the war on terrorism has generally swept broadly and put a high premium on convictions at any cost. That puts pressure on prosecutors - to overcharge, to coach witnesses, to fail to disclose exculpatory evidence."

The judge in Moussaoui's trial barred the government from seeking the death penalty after prosecutors refused to give the defense access to detained al Qaeda leaders to exonerate Moussaoui. Judge Leonie Brinkema's decision was overturned by the appeals court. Judge Brinkema nearly dropped the death penalty again after prosecutors improperly coached several witnesses.

Bush frequently declares that his administration is bringing the terrorists to justice. Yet his systematic use of torture on prisoners, a series of botched prosecutions, and pathetic scapegoats hardly inspire confidence in our chief executive.

Indeed, on Friday, the Justice Department admitted for the first time that it issued 9,254 subpoenas to banks, telephone companies and Internet providers last year, seeking information on 3,501 US citizens and legal residents. This should give us all pause. You or I could be next.

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Spinning Fear

The terror’s in the room.
- CBS Journalist Edward R. Murrow, 1954 (Good Night and Good Luck)

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
- Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1933


During the 1950’s, our government succumbed to the fear of Communism hyped by Senator Joseph McCarthy. People lost their jobs, lives were ruined, and many committed suicide in response to the “red scare.” Fear pervaded every facet of life, leading neighbors to inform on one another. CBS newscaster Edward R. Murrow was one of the few journalists who had the courage to stand up to the fear-mongering and bring the truth to the American people. Describing the omnipresent fear that the government was fostering, Murrow told his colleagues, “The terror’s in the room.”

It’s dejá vu with the Bush administration ensuring that terror is always in the room. Since Sept. 11, 2001, George W. Bush has successfully manipulated the memory of the terrorist attacks to maintain power and mute effective criticism of his dangerous and illegal policies.

Bush continues to exploit 9/11, and the media is complicit in the hype. Cable news stations keep us informed of an “elevated” terror alert level.

The month after the 9/11 attacks, former Attorney General John Ashcroft rammed The USA Patriot Act through a Congress terrified of looking soft on terror. That same Congress had rejected many of the act’s provisions months earlier because they threatened civil liberties.

Ashcroft warned that criticism of the government’s policies “only aids terrorists.” His successor, Alberto Gonzales, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, “We remain a nation at war.”

The war is in Iraq, created from whole cloth by George W. Bush. There were no terrorists in Iraq before Bush invaded that country, changed its regime and occupied its land. Now it is a breeding ground for terrorism.

Hundreds of men are being held like animals, tortured and abused in the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay. Only a handful of them have been charged with crimes. The despicable conditions there have caused many to participate in a hunger strike. Rather than suffer the embarrassment of dying prisoners, jailers have been force-feeding them. They tie the prisoners down and insert large, unsterilized tubes down their noses with no anesthesia. Some call it a form of torture.

Reports from Guantánamo and pictures of the torture of Iraqi prisoners by US forces at Abu Ghraib prison have also fanned the flames of anti-American sentiment.

Bush calls his illegal domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency the “Terrorist Surveillance Program.” Dick Cheney told PBS’ Jim Lehrer that “this program has saved thousands of American lives.” Yet there’s no way to prove – or disprove – Cheney’s claim.

The Washington Post reported that, of the thousands of calls Bush’s NSA program has intercepted, almost none relate to anything approximating terrorism.

The hallmark of the Bush administration is secrecy. CIA Director Porter Goss wrote in a recent op-ed in the New York Times, “Disclosure of classified intelligence inhibits our ability to carry out our mission and protect the nation.”

Yet, as whistleblower Sibel Edmonds pointed out recently, the 9/11 Commission concluded that only “publicity” could have prevented the attacks. Had Osama Bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed known the so-called 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui had been arrested, they would have called off the attacks. The 9/11 Commission sharply criticized the government for classifying too much information.

In 2003, the Bush administration rescinded Clinton’s rule that information should not be classified “if there is significant doubt” that releasing it would harm national security.

The deputy undersecretary of defense for counterintelligence and security testified at a March 2005 congressional hearing that 50 percent of the Pentagon’s information was over-classified; the head of the Information Security Oversight Office said it was “even beyond 50 percent.”

When whistleblowers and leakers reveal information critical of Bush policies, the administration mounts an attack on the messenger. In response to the New York Times report on the NSA spying program, the government launched an investigation to determine who leaked the information to the Times. When Gonzales tried to turn criticism of the program into an assault on the leakers, Senator Patrick Leahy declared, “Thank god we have press that tell us what you’re doing because you’re not telling us.”

After the Times carried its report of the NSA program, some senators refused to vote to renew provisions of the Patriot Act that were due to expire on December 31, 2005. A last-minute compromise was cobbled together to extend those provisions for five weeks.

Just as the five week period was about to run out, Bush announced with great fanfare that an October 2001 al Qaeda plan to attack the tallest building on the West Coast had been thwarted by an unnamed Southeast Asian country. Once again, we have no corroboration of the accuracy of Bush’s claim. His past lies lead many to question the truthfulness of his report.

Bush gave no credit to the NSA spying program. He most certainly would have if it had foiled the plot. The day after Bush’s “revelation,” Congress announced it had reached an agreement to make the Patriot Act permanent. Once again, the manipulation of fear succeeded in neutering the Congress.

Another example of the Bush administration’s selective revelations of its own secret information is the leaking of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s name to journalists. The leak was strategically designed to punish Plame’s husband Joseph Wilson for blowing the whistle on Bush’s lies used to bolster support for his impending invasion of Iraq.

The most famous leaker in United States history is Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971. Those documents revealed the lies and hypocrisy of US policy in Southeast Asia. In 2003, Ellsberg told Salon.com writer Michelle Goldberg, “We’re now in an aggressive, costly war. The While House had to lie about those policies to make them viable, and when you lie you have to keep the lies secret, you have to intimidate people who might be inclined to tell the truth, all that goes together. Why do they do it?,” he asked rhetorically. “Wilson and I have no trouble knowing why they did it. They don’t want people to act the way we do.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt assumed the mantle of President at the height of the Great Depression. People were broke, out of work, and afraid there might not be a next meal. Roosevelt told them, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” The people jumped on board with his New Deal, and pulled themselves out of the depression. FDR didn’t exploit people’s real fears. He courageously challenged them to face their fears and overcome them.

The Bush administration continues to perfect the art of terrifying. Many in Congress live in fear of losing their seats if they appear soft on terrorism.

But most Americans oppose Bush’s illegal Iraq war and his secret spying program. The power to stop this war and the assault on our civil liberties rests in the hands of the people. Congress is reactive. It reacts to Bush’s tactics of manipulation. But it will not be able to avoid reacting to an overwhelming call by the people to check the imperial executive.

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Bush's Judges: Right-Wing Ideologues

In 1988, while trying to convince skeptical conservative activists of his father's Christian bona fides, George W. Bush reassured them that George I was with them on judicial nominations, as well as abortion and other issues dear to their hearts. Then he punctuated his declarations with the six words that would ensure their support for him 12 years later: "Jesus Christ is my personal savior."

Bush's brand of religiosity permeates his national policies. When Bob Woodward asked him whether he consulted his dad before invading Iraq, Bush said, "He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice, the wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength. There's a higher Father that I appeal to."

George W. Bush's sort of Christianity also guides his judicial nominations. Bush's nominees for lifetime appointments to our federal courts are judges who would eviscerate civil rights, workers' rights, and the environment. Their agendas are anti-choice and pro-corporate.

Many people think the two most important things at stake in November's presidential election are the war on Iraq and the economy. True, but perhaps the most far-reaching impact of this election is who will appoint the nation's judges beginning January 2005.

The political balance on the Supreme Court hangs by a slender thread. Seventeen cases were decided on a 5-4 vote. Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor provided the swing vote in many of them. O'Connor and Chief Justice William Rehnquist have reportedly considered stepping down from the Court.

Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, lamenting the Court's interference in the 2000 presidential election, said, "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."

Although a one-vote margin of the Supreme Court anointed George W. Bush president in 2000, the Court has not voted in lockstep this term. In the Guantánamo and U.S. citizen detention cases, the Court made clear that the President's power is not absolute. It upheld the rights of the disabled, and non-citizens to recover for human rights violations.

But the next President of the United States may have the opportunity to appoint four new justices to the Supreme Court. That power could radically change the complexion of the precariously divided Court that pronounces the law of the land.

Rehnquist, who has been on the Court for 32 years, is 79 years old. Stevens, a member of the Court for 29 years, is 84. And O'Connor, on the Court for 23 years, is 74 years old. Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 71 years old, is a cancer survivor in frail health.

It is common for a Supreme Court justice to serve for at least 20 or 30 years. That means that the man elected in November will likely determine the fabric of the law in America for the next 40 years. Ralph Neas, executive director of People for the American Way, says "more than 100 Supreme Court precedents would be overturned with one or two more right-wing justices like Thomas and Scalia."

If Bush is elected, we can expect his Supreme Court picks to mirror his choices for our nation's lower federal courts. Two of his nominees have made news lately for their advice on how Bush's interrogators can torture prisoners without risking criminal prosecution.

Former Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee prepared a 50-page document that defied U.S. statutory and treaty law by defining torture so narrowly, it would permit horrific treatment as long it wasn't life-threatening. Bush rewarded Bybee for his legal creativity with an appointment-for-life to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal court with the largest caseload in the country.

Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes II is a career military lawyer with almost no courtroom experience that would qualify him for a lifetime seat on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Yet after Haynes supervised the preparation of a report advising that the President's Commander-in-Chief authority would trump the prohibition against torture, Bush nominated him for a coveted spot on the Fourth Circuit.

This "federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., is emerging as a cutting-edge testing ground for conservative legal theories that only a few years ago seemed radical and almost unthinkable to liberal legal analysts," Warren Richey wrote in the Christian Science Monitor two years ago. "Today, many of them are the law of the land. Instead of being overturned, these legal theories – involving limits to federal power and defendants' rights – are being embraced and upheld by a slim majority of conservative justices on the US Supreme Court," according to Richey. It's no surprise that John Ashcroft decided to file the cases against John Walker Lindh and Zacarias Moussaoui in the Virginia district court. Ashcroft knew he would get more favorable appellate treatment from the Fourth Circuit, widely heralded as the most conservative circuit in the country.

The revelations of Haynes' apologies for torture may not sit well when U.S. Senators, who must give their advice and consent to Bush's nominees, consider Haynes' nomination. Pictures and accounts of torture at Abu Ghraib prison, Guantánamo Bay and Afghanistan may have poisoned the well for William Haynes.

The Senate has confirmed 198 of Bush's judicial nominees, bringing the vacancy rate to its lowest level in years. Nevertheless, in a campaign trip to Senator John Edwards' home state of North Carolina and to Michigan, Bush claimed that Democrats were unfairly obstructing his judicial nominations.

Edwards' tough questioning of Charles Pickering, Bush's nominee to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, was instrumental in the defeat of Pickering's nomination. Bush, however, circumvented the Senate's constitutional role in the selection of judges by appointing Pickering anyway during a Congressional recess.

Pickering's checkered past includes his article explaining how to strengthen Mississippi's statute criminalizing interracial marriages. He also cast several votes as a state senator impeding the full extension of electoral opportunities to African-Americans. Pickering voted for a constitutional convention to overturn Roe v. Wade. Perhaps his most controversial action as a federal district court judge involved his threats and unethical communications to force prosecutors to drop a charge against a man convicted of burning a cross on the lawn of an interracial couple with a small child.

Bush also ran an end run around the Senate by appointing Bill Pryor to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Pryor has expressed extreme hostility to a woman's constitutional right to reproductive choice. He called Roe v. Wade "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history."

But Pryor's contempt isn't limited to women. When he went to federal court to try to overturn a consent decree protecting abused and neglected Alabama children, he told reporters: "It matters not to me whether or not [my actions protect children]. My job is to make sure the state of Alabama isn't run by [a] federal court. My job isn't to come here and help children."

Pryor fits nicely into Bush's mold for right-wing Christian ideologues. Judge Pryor said that the challenge of this millennium will be to "preserve the American experiment by restoring its Christian perspective."

Bush's recess appointments of Pickering and Pryor so incensed Democratic senators that they held up several of Bush's other pending judicial nominations. In May, Bush struck a deal with the Democrats. He agreed not to make recess appointments; the Democrats consented to allowing the votes to proceed on the 25 mostly "noncontroversial" pending nominees.

By a vote of 51-46, however, the Senate last week confirmed James Leon Holmes for a seat on the Eastern District of Arkansas, a federal district court. Holmes' anti-woman and anti-choice views were so extreme that Republican Senators Hutchison, Chafee, Snowe, Collins, and Warner crossed party lines and voted against him.

Bush's nomination of Holmes became a lightning rod due to his views on the subservience of women. In a 1997 article in a Catholic newspaper, Holmes wrote: "The wife is to subordinate herself to her husband" and "the woman is to place herself under the authority of the man."

Holmes has compared legalized abortion to the Holocaust, and said: "I think the abortion issue is the simplest issue this country has faced since slavery was made unconstitutional. And it deserves the same response." He has even dismissed the rape and incest exception by inventing the preposterous claim that "the concern for rape victims is a red herring because conceptions from rape occur with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami."

In fact, studies estimate that between 25,000 and 32,000 women each year become pregnant as a result of rape in the United States, but only about 50 percent of these pregnancies end in abortion. And it has only snowed once in Miami in the last century.

Holmes blames the feminist movement for what he considers a whole host of immoralities: "It is not coincidental that the feminist movement brought with it artificial contraception and abortion on demand, with recognition of homosexual liaisons to follow. No matter how often we condemn abortion, to the extent we adopt the feminist principle that the distinction between the sexes is of no consequence and should be disregarded in the organization of society and the Church, we are contributing to the culture of death."

Bush's pending judicial nominees for federal circuit court appointments include Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, who voted to benefit Halliburton and Enron after taking campaign contributions from them. He has also nominated California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, whose decisions have shown great hostility to affirmative action, the rights of workers, gays, senior citizens and the disabled, to protecting children from lead poisoning, and to the right of choice. Two hundred-fifty law professors, including this writer, signed a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee urging rejection of Brown's nomination.

The Alliance for Justice, which monitors Bush's nominations for federal judgeships, has set forth alternative criteria for evaluating the record of a judicial nominee: He or she should have demonstrated a commitment to protecting the rights of ordinary Americans, rather than placing the interests of the powerful over those of individual citizens. The nominee must have fulfilled his or her professional obligation to work on behalf of the disadvantaged. His or her record should show a commitment to the progress made on civil rights, reproductive freedom, and individual liberties. Or the nominee should have manifested a respect for the constitutional role Congress plays in promoting civil rights and health and safety protections and ensuring recourse when these rights are breached.

Many of George W. Bush's nominees fail to satisfy any of these requirements. He has sought out ideologues who meet a litmus test for pleasing his right-wing religious backers. If Bush is elected president in November, we can expect him to mold the federal judiciary – and probably the Supreme Court – in his own image. A frightening thought.

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Televise Moussaoui's Trial

U.S. District Court Judge Leonie M. Brinkema has denied Court TV's request to broadcast the trial of accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, citing security and procedural concerns. She determined that the public benefit from televising this noteworthy trial is "heavily outweighed" by the "significant dangers... [it] would pose to the orderly and secure administration of justice." Although cameras have been excluded from federal criminal courts for 56 years, this trial should be televised.

In 1963, the Warren Court held that televising a trial denies the defendant due process. Twenty-one years later, the Burger Court ruled that a state judge may allow cameras into the courtroom unless the defendant demonstrates that televising the trial would deny due process by interfering with the ability of the jury to be fair. That case assigned the defendant a burden, which was almost impossible to meet, consistent with the Burger Court's steady evisceration of the rights of criminal defendants.

Today, all 50 states allow some type of camera coverage; 38 permit cameras in criminal courts. Federal courts, however, have forbidden courtroom cameras since Rule of Criminal Procedure 53 was enacted in 1946. Although there have been limited experiments with televising civil proceedings, federal judges, like Brinkema, have held fast to the ban in criminal cases.

Jury pools and evening news

Moussaoui's lawyers favor broadcasting the trial but not the pretrial proceedings. They rightly fear that the jury pool might be tainted by exposure to evidence that may be ruled inadmissible later at trial. They're also concerned that snippets from the trial could be played and replayed on the evening news, which would distort the proceedings in the eyes of the viewing public. But the defense wants Moussaoui's trial broadcast in order to show the world-and indeed to ensure-that his trial is being conducted fairly.

The brutality of the Sept. 11 attacks has shaken our country and the world. Although a strong response is warranted, the government has overreacted with an alarming erosion of civil liberties.

With almost no dissent, Congress enacted Attorney General John Ashcroft's USA Patriot Act, which makes it easier for the government to read our e-mail and see the Web sites we've visited. Ashcroft has announced the return of government surveillance of political and religious organizations. And President Bush has established a mechanism for military tribunals that doesn't comply with basic standards of due process.

In our haste to bring the culprits to justice, we must ensure that we do not sacrifice our basic constitutional rights. Anyone who comes before our courts is entitled to the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial, which is enshrined in the Constitution.

The Sunshine in the Courtroom Act was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee late last year and is pending in the Senate. The bill would give judges in federal trials and appeals discretion to permit cameras in their courtrooms, but it would require them to accord witnesses the option of having their faces and voices obscured.

Security could be protected by broadcasting the trial without showing the faces of the jurors, so as to shield them from possible retaliation. Witnesses' faces could be obscured by covering them with blue dots.

Because of the overwhelming public interest in Moussaoui's trial, millions of people would watch it on television. The defense motion to broadcast only the trial should have been granted, in order to protect the impartiality of the jury panel.

The Supreme Court has upheld the public's right of access to the judicial system, but has stopped short of saying the right to a public trial means the right to a televised one. It has also refused to prioritize between the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial and the public's First Amendment right to access to the criminal system. Whether these rights can be protected involves a case-by-case determination. In Zacarias Moussaoui's case, both rights could be safeguarded by televising it.

Read on >>

Televise Moussaoui's Trial

U.S. District Court Judge Leonie M. Brinkema has denied Court TV's request to broadcast the trial of accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, citing security and procedural concerns. She determined that the public benefit from televising this noteworthy trial is "heavily outweighed" by the "significant dangers... [it] would pose to the orderly and secure administration of justice." Although cameras have been excluded from federal criminal courts for 56 years, this trial should be televised.

In 1963, the Warren Court held that televising a trial denies the defendant due process. Twenty-one years later, the Burger Court ruled that a state judge may allow cameras into the courtroom unless the defendant demonstrates that televising the trial would deny due process by interfering with the ability of the jury to be fair. That case assigned the defendant a burden, which was almost impossible to meet, consistent with the Burger Court's steady evisceration of the rights of criminal defendants.

Today, all 50 states allow some type of camera coverage; 38 permit cameras in criminal courts. Federal courts, however, have forbidden courtroom cameras since Rule of Criminal Procedure 53 was enacted in 1946. Although there have been limited experiments with televising civil proceedings, federal judges, like Brinkema, have held fast to the ban in criminal cases.

Jury pools and evening news

Moussaoui's lawyers favor broadcasting the trial but not the pretrial proceedings. They rightly fear that the jury pool might be tainted by exposure to evidence that may be ruled inadmissible later at trial. They're also concerned that snippets from the trial could be played and replayed on the evening news, which would distort the proceedings in the eyes of the viewing public. But the defense wants Moussaoui's trial broadcast in order to show the world-and indeed to ensure-that his trial is being conducted fairly.

The brutality of the Sept. 11 attacks has shaken our country and the world. Although a strong response is warranted, the government has overreacted with an alarming erosion of civil liberties.

With almost no dissent, Congress enacted Attorney General John Ashcroft's USA Patriot Act, which makes it easier for the government to read our e-mail and see the Web sites we've visited. Ashcroft has announced the return of government surveillance of political and religious organizations. And President Bush has established a mechanism for military tribunals that doesn't comply with basic standards of due process.

In our haste to bring the culprits to justice, we must ensure that we do not sacrifice our basic constitutional rights. Anyone who comes before our courts is entitled to the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial, which is enshrined in the Constitution.

The Sunshine in the Courtroom Act was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee late last year and is pending in the Senate. The bill would give judges in federal trials and appeals discretion to permit cameras in their courtrooms, but it would require them to accord witnesses the option of having their faces and voices obscured.

Security could be protected by broadcasting the trial without showing the faces of the jurors, so as to shield them from possible retaliation. Witnesses' faces could be obscured by covering them with blue dots.

Because of the overwhelming public interest in Moussaoui's trial, millions of people would watch it on television. The defense motion to broadcast only the trial should have been granted, in order to protect the impartiality of the jury panel.

The Supreme Court has upheld the public's right of access to the judicial system, but has stopped short of saying the right to a public trial means the right to a televised one. It has also refused to prioritize between the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial and the public's First Amendment right to access to the criminal system. Whether these rights can be protected involves a case-by-case determination. In Zacarias Moussaoui's case, both rights could be safeguarded by televising it.

Read on >>