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Criticism of Ashcroft Over Moussaoui Case

By Jeralyn, Section Terror Trials
Posted on Wed Dec 10, 2003 at 07:22:48 PM EST
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Conservative legal affairs writer Stuart Taylor joins the chorus of those criticizing Attorney General John Ashcroft for his unfair tactics in the Zacarias Moussaoui case:

But Attorney General John Ashcroft seems so eager to kill the man that he would shoot a hole in the Constitution to get him. Ashcroft wants to put Moussaoui on trial for the capital crime of complicity in the 9/11 plot, without letting his lawyers take the testimony of three captured Qaeda leaders who may have told interrogators that Moussaoui did not participate in it. That's the watered-down notion of justice that an Ashcroft subordinate urged a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., to endorse on December 3.

The appeals court should say no. This might keep Ashcroft from getting the death sentence he craves for Moussaoui, since the charges connecting Moussaoui to 9/11—which Moussaoui denies, and for which the evidence seems thin—appear to be the only ones punishable by death under current law. But Moussaoui is doomed to die in prison in any event, of old age if not by execution. And the difference between killing him and locking him up forever is simply not important enough to justify an unfair trial. Indeed, putting Moussaoui to death would be so idiotic that it's hard to believe any sensible official really wants to do it.

[link via Patriot Watch.]

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