America, you won
In refusing to sentence Zacarias Moussaoui to death, jurors stuck to their country's principles and made the world a safer place.
Clive Stafford Smith
The fact that last night a US jury declined to sentence Zacarias Moussaoui to death demonstrates that the people are acting on far higher principles than their leaders. Dostoyevsky's maxim, that "society should not be judged on how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals" is as relevant as ever. It is particularly applicable to our treatment of those accused and convicted of terrorism.
Moussaoui shouted out as he was led away: "America, you lost!" I beg to differ. The US attorney general lost, but the people of America and the principles on which the nation was founded won. What is clear is that the US attorney general and his boss, George W Bush, are out of touch with both the people and common sense.
Any death sentence is a moral failure; on a more practical level, to impose one on Moussaoui would have been a catastrophe.
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http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/clive_stafford_smith/2006/05/moussaoui_jury_leads_the_way.html