Should Moussaoui Live or Die?

A federal court jury began deliberations today on whether Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th 9/11 hijacker, should live or die.

I am an opponent of the death penalty. Not because I think taking a life or a life is wrong, but because the standards by which it is applied in America too often cut along racial and socio-economic lines. But for nutcase terrorist thugs like Moussaoui, I'm willing to make an exception and probably would vote to fry him if I were a juror.

Other folks, including Washington Post op-ed columnist Richard Cohen, take another tack. He writes today that:

The way things are going, the United States government will succeed where Zacarias Moussaoui could not. . . . Nonetheless, while the American sense of justice might be satisfied, that is not how many other people will see it. Instead, they might marvel at how much effort had gone into the killing of a single man. They will note his trial and the lengthy part of it devoted to determining if he is worthy of the death penalty and then whether or not he will get it. The process is almost a parody of justice -- a laborious procedure to carry out what most of us recognize is nothing more than revenge. .

. . . If I had my way, I would deny Moussaoui his opportunity. I would do so not just because it is pretty clear the man is crazy and, on account of that, he played a marginal role at best in the 9/11 plot, but because I would not complete the plot for him. I would not grant him what he wanted from the day he stepped foot in America -- his own death. If, in his case, the punishment is to fit the crime, then he would suffer most by spending the rest of his life behind bars. When he dies of old age, he will have been forgotten. In no place will people gather to mark his death. That will not happen if he is executed.

What do you think?