Moussaoui Removed From Courtroom - Yahoo! News

Moussaoui Removed From Courtroom - Yahoo! News
Judge Removes Moussaoui From Courtroom
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN and MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press Writers1 hour, 21 minutes ago
A federal judge is trying to turn the courtroom misbehavior of confessed al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui into a useful tool for picking the jury that will decide whether he is put to death or imprisoned for life.
Five hundred potential jurors from northern Virginia got a taste Monday of what his sentencing trial might entail: Moussaoui was kicked out of court four times as a month of jury selection got underway.
Last April, Moussaoui pleaded guilty to conspiring to fly planes into U.S. buildings, but claimed he had no role in the Sept. 11 plot.
Potential jurors came to court in four separate groups. Moussaoui, a short, bearded Frenchman in a green prison jump suit, interrupted the first session just as it began — to announce "I'm al-Qaida" and disavow the lawyers appointed by the court to represent him.
U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema warned Moussaoui that it wasn't his time to speak and, when he kept going, had marshals escort him from the room. He left without resistance, but declared, "This trial is a circus."
Court observers wondered if Brinkema would allow Moussaoui, who disrupted many pretrial proceedings, back in the courtroom. She decided to bring him back for the remaining three sessions, each of which played out in nearly identical fashion. In later sessions, he also vowed to "take the stand to tell the whole truth about my involvement."
Brinkema told the first panel of jurors: "If any of you feel that that outburst or the way he conducted himself might affect the way in which you would go about judging this case, you need to clearly put that statement on the jury questionnaire." She repeated that admonition to the other three panels.
"She turned that to some constructive use," said Carl Tobias, law professor at the University of Richmond. "Once it happened, it probably made sense to make sure every group saw the same behavior — and he cooperated."
Tobias said Brinkema may have helped keep any future Moussaoui outbursts from tainting the trial by "using their reaction as one test of whether they are fit to sit on the jury."
Prosecutors and defense lawyers will spend the next week sorting through 500 questionnaires potential jurors filled out Monday.
The 49-page document included 159 questions. It asked about jurors' religious practices and their views of Islam and Arabs; Moussaoui is a Muslim of Moroccan descent. They also were asked their views about the death penalty, the Sept. 11 attacks, and the FBI's performance in several high-profile cases.
Jurors will be questioned individually beginning Feb. 15 with the goal of seating 12 jurors and six alternates in time for opening statements on March 6.
Brinkema told the prospective jurors the case hinges on whether Moussaoui lied when interrogated before Sept. 11, 2001, and whether people died that day as a direct result.
Advocating execution, prosecutors contend Moussaoui could have prevented the attacks by telling authorities about al-Qaida's designs. Defense attorneys say the government knew more about the plot than Moussaoui before 9/11 and still couldn't stop the attacks.
Moussaoui was arrested on immigration charges Aug. 17, 2001, after arousing suspicion as he trained at a Minnesota flight school to fly 747 jetliners. He was still in custody when 19 hijackers flew two 757 and two 767 jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people in the nation's deadliest terrorist attack.
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On the Net:
U.S. District Court: http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/index.html
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