Jury says Moussaoui is eligible for execution

Now the jury will decide whether he deserves the death penalty.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- He was sitting in a Minnesota jail Sept. 11, 2001, but Zacarias Moussaoui bears responsibility for the deaths on that day even though he never joined the 19 hijackers who slammed planes into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
That was the conclusion Monday of a federal jury at Moussaoui's sentencing trial, which deemed Moussaoui eligible to be executed for conspiring with Al-Qaida to commit international terrorism, destroy aircraft and use weapons of mass destruction.
The trial now moves into a second phase that will determine whether Moussaoui will actually be put to death.
The jury accepted prosecutors' argument that Moussaoui -- the only person in this country charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks -- directly caused at least one of the nearly 3,000 deaths that day by lying to FBI agents and refusing to confess his Al-Qaida ties when he was arrested in August 2001.
Moussaoui, for his part, remained defiant.
Curses the courtroom
"You'll never get my blood, God curse you all," he said at the conclusion of Monday's 10-minute hearing. He sat in his chair and prayed silently as the verdict was read, refusing to join his defense team in standing as the verdict was read.
When the sentencing trial resumes Thursday, the jury will begin hearing testimony on whether the 37-year-old Frenchman deserves to be executed for his role.
The testimony will include families of Sept. 11 victims who will describe the human impact of the Al-Qaida mission that flew four jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
Court-appointed defense lawyers, whom Moussaoui has tried to reject, will summon experts to suggest he is schizophrenic after an impoverished childhood during which he faced racism in France over his Moroccan ancestry.
First phase
The trial's first phase, which focused strictly on legal arguments, was likely Moussaoui's best chance to avoid execution. The jury deciding his fate will now be weighing the emotional impact of nearly 3,000 horrific deaths against Moussaoui's rough childhood and possible evidence of mental illness.
Had the jury determined Moussaoui was ineligible for the death penalty, he would have been sentenced to life in prison.
Moussaoui was arrested Aug. 16, 2001, on immigration violations after his attempts to obtain flight training aroused suspicion. Moussaoui lied to agents when he was arrested, denying he was a terrorist and saying the flight training was for personal enjoyment. Prosecutors argued that if Moussaoui had confessed his Al-Qaida membership and his intent to hijack an aircraft, federal agents could have tracked down most of the Sept. 11 hijackers and thwarted or at least minimized the attacks.
The FBI agent who arrested Moussaoui was suspicious from the outset and urged headquarters to launch an all-out investigation, but trial testimony indicated that the agent's bosses at FBI headquarters were largely dismissive of his suspicions.
Defense's side
The defense argued that a confession from Moussaoui would have changed nothing because the FBI and other federal agencies were inept in processing terror threats in the time frame before Sept. 11.
Abraham Scott, who lost his wife, Janice Marie, on Sept. 11, said he actually felt sorry for Moussaoui "but not enough to drop the possibility of him getting the death penalty."
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