Zacarias Moussaoui: Justice Is Served (Cold)

Having previously suggest that Zacarias Moussaoui should fry, I am comfortable with a federal jury's decision to give the so-called 20th 9/11 hijacker life in prison.

Here's why:

* As Country Bumpkin and other visitors to Kiko's House have noted, sparing Moussaoui's life denies him the martrydom he sought. He'll just have to look for those seventysomething Islamic virgins at a maximum-security federal lockup in Colorado while watching his back in the shower room.

Moussaoui had one last opportunity to act out at sentencing today, prompting federal Judge Leonie Brinkima to reply: "You came here to be a martyr and die in a big bang

* When all was said and done, the government failed to make the case that Moussaoui had more than a tangential role in the planning for the 9/11 hijackings.

* Moussaoui is a nut, albeit a malevolent one. I have little empathy for his troubled childhood, but you don't give nuts the death penalty just because they's nuts.

* Moussaoui's trials, Brinkima's cool demeanor, the jury's deliberations and their sentence send a message to the world, especially the so-called Arab street: When it works -- and it did in this case -- the U.S. criminal-justice system is transparent and rigorously fair.

I'm less sanguine about due process, which the Justice Department observed only in the breech and when forced to by Brinkima. (And remember, only a measly 10 of the 490 detainees in the Guantanamo brig have even been charged.)

Meanwhile, Citizen Hunter (aka Flavia Colgin) makes a strong case for why the Moussaoui jury did the right thing, while Peggy Noonan begs to differ in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

And legal affairs guru Dahlia Lithwick nicely sums up the whole 'arama in a Slate commentary:

This case was about a conspiracy, about some factual connection, however attenuated, between Zacarias Moussaoui's jihadi heart and the events of 9/11. And although the government has steadfastly stood by its legal claim that it was enough for Moussaoui to have wanted to be on those planes on 9/11, enough for him to have delighted as those planes went down, the jurors recognized . . . that a conspiracy to aid in a terror plot requires more than just a bad heart, and more than mere willingness to participate in the next one.

This decision, which will doubtless bring with it some serious national fallout, is more subtle, and more courageous, than the prosecution itself. Acting as a check on a runaway state, these jurors refused to allow a government needing a scapegoat and a man wishing for martyrdom to stand in the way of the facts. These jurors understood that for this country to kill a terrorist for his ideas, hopes, and dreams is not much different than the terrorist's desire to come here and kill us for ours.