Federal judge bars death sentence and Sept. 11 evidence in Moussaoui case
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) A federal judge dealt a severe setback to the only U.S. prosecution arising from the Sept. 11 attacks, ruling Thursday that the government cannot seek to execute Zacarias Moussaoui or introduce trial evidence linking the al-Qaida loyalist to the suicide hijackings.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema punished the government for refusing court orders to make three high-level al-Qaida prisoners available to Moussaoui.
She forced the Bush administration to choose between taking the dispute over witnesses to a federal appeals court or moving Moussaoui's case from a civilian court to a military tribunal.
Prosecutors rejected the third option of presenting the government's case without Sept. 11 testimony, even though the indictment alleges that Moussaoui was part of a much broader al-Qaida conspiracy against the United States.
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The government could move the case to a military tribunal, where greater secrecy could be allowed, but Brinkema said she ruled out dismissing the case in order to keep the trial in ''an open and public forum.''
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In barring the Sept. 11 evidence, Brinkema said the government could still obtain a conviction by proving that Moussaoui was part of al-Qaida conspiracy that did not involve the 2001 attacks.
The government had a much heavier burden to show that Moussaoui is eligible for the death penalty, the judge said, because prosecutors must show that his actions resulted in murder.
If Moussaoui is shown to be a minor player in al-Qaida's war against the United States, he couldn't lawfully ''be sentenced to death for the actions of other members of al-Qaida who perpetrated the Sept. 11 attacks,'' the judge said.
