For Victims' Families, Verdict Elicits Mix of Shock, Relief

By Timothy Dwyer and Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 4, 2006

Abraham Scott had tears in his eyes yesterday as he left Courtroom 700. He had wanted Zacarias Moussaoui to get the death penalty and now, after hearing much of the wrenching testimony himself, he could not believe the jury did not agree with him.

"I felt the same way I remember feeling on the day after September 11," he said, "when I kept hoping that someone would call me and tell me that my wife had not been killed at the Pentagon, that she was alive."

Outside the federal courthouse in Alexandria and in telephone interviews last evening, relatives of the victims expressed a range of feelings about the jury's verdict. Some, like Scott, were disappointed that Moussaoui would not be executed. Others said they thought spending the rest of his life in prison might be worse than death -- and deprive him of becoming a martyr.

Family members played a prominent role inside the courtroom during the second phase of the trial, after jurors had decided that Moussaoui was eligible for the death penalty.

The prosecution called more than three dozen men and women to the witness stand, where many recalled the abject pain and suffering their families had endured -- and still endure -- since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Some broke down on the stand. Some said they were still paralyzed by their grief. Moussaoui mocked them all.

Moussaoui's attorneys turned to a rare courtroom tactic by calling some relatives of the victims as defense witnesses. Although they were not allowed to say whether they favored life in prison over execution, they spoke of their recovery and used words such as "compassion" and "respect for life" when they spoke of their loss.

It is unclear what impact, if any, the testimony of families on behalf of the defense had on the jury's decision. For security reasons, the nine men and three women were anonymous, identified only by their juror number.

The trial was conducted amid tight security inside and outside the federal courthouse. Forty-five minutes before the verdict was announced at 4:30 p.m., about 10 motorcycle officers roared into the plaza in front of the building, parked their bikes and stood between the building and the media city.

As the family members, including Scott, came out the front door, construction came to a halt on a building opposite the front door. When the trial began with jury selection Feb. 6, there had been only a hole in the ground at the construction site.

Rosemary Dillard, whose husband died Sept. 11 at the Pentagon, stood at a bank of microphones and began talking. "We can't hear you!" reporters screamed. She shouted that she respected the jury's decision to incarcerate Moussaoui for the rest of his life. The verdict, she said, bolsters her belief that the United States is a just and fair country.

"We showed the world what we do to terrorists," said Dillard, whose husband, Eddie, was on American Airlines Flight 77 when it was crashed into the Pentagon. "We'll show them respect no matter how much disrespect they show us. It makes us a finer society."

Dillard, who also attended much of the trial, said she never figured out if Moussaoui is "in his right mind or playing a game." Dillard has never said publicly if she wanted life or death for Moussaoui and wouldn't reveal her feelings yesterday. "That's only for me," she said. "I know America is a fair place to live."

One by one, family members stepped up to address the media. With the waning sun on her face and holding up a photograph of her mother, who died on American Airlines Flight 11, Carie Lemack said Moussaoui was a "wannabe" terrorist and deserves no credit for Sept. 11.

"I'm proud of the jury today and know my mother would be, too," she said. "Moussaoui was not capable of pulling off these horrible attacks. He deserves to rot in jail. . . . What this trial was really about was the people who died that day."

She said she had expected the jury to sentence him to death. "I was shocked. I always assumed they would give him the death penalty because they had found him eligible for it."

Scott, too, was shocked. He had stepped into a restroom to compose himself before he left the courthouse, but once he began talking outside, tears filled his eyes again.

"We don't know what transpired that day on September 11. Only Moussaoui knows and the Lord knows," he said, his voice choked with emotion. "I'm moving on now."

Asked what he would tell his wife, Janice, who died in the attack on the Pentagon, about the jury's decision, he said, " 'Baby, at least one perpetrator has been brought to justice. . . . I hope you're looking down upon us and are pleased.' "

Family members who did not attend the trial were able to watch it on a closed-circuit television broadcast set up by an act of Congress at courthouses in Boston, Manhattan, Long Island, Newark and Philadelphia.

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema said in an April 12 bench conference unsealed yesterday that attendance at the remote viewing sites had rarely exceeded 25 people each day. "Frankly, the number of people at the sites, amazingly, is low," she told lawyers.

Sheila Langone, who lost two sons -- one a New York firefighter and one a New York police officer -- was not able to go to one of the sites from her Long Island home. She learned of the verdict on television.

"I'm disappointed that it wasn't the death penalty, but the jury had a tough job to do," she said in a telephone interview. "I think the jury didn't think he had that active a role in September 11. I think they had a lot of trouble coming to the decision."

She said she is happy that the trial is over and saw at least one positive factor in the sentence -- she won't have to endure years of appeals that likely would have followed had Moussaoui been sentenced to death.

"I will be glad not to have to see his face in the newspaper anymore," she said. "They can just tuck him away somewhere, and we never have to hear from him again."

Moussaoui's mother, Aicha el-Wafi, who had spent several days in the courtroom being ignored by her son during the first phase of the trial, was in Paris when the verdict was announced. She is scheduled to hold a news conference there today.

"I was relieved," said Blake Allison, who testified on behalf of the defense during the trial. "I think it is fair to say that it has been a long haul for all the family members, regardless of where they fall in terms of what the appropriate punishment should be."

Allison, of Lyme, N.H., whose wife, Anna Allison, was killed on American Airlines Flight 11, said he testified for the defense because he is against the death penalty.

"I didn't feel that capital punishment was the appropriate response. I don't think the government's case was terribly convincing."

Staff writers Jamie Stockwell, Leef Smith and Lisa Rein and staff researchers Julie Tate and Meg Smith contributed to this report.