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Article

Abstract

September 11 seared our collective memory perhaps even more vividly than December 7, 1941, and has evoked a natural demand both for retribution and for measures to keep us safe. Given the existing statutory and judicial authority for capital punishment, the U.S. Government has to confront the issue whether to seek the death penalty against those who are linked to the suicide attacks or to the organization that sponsored them or both. Meting out the death penalty to international terrorists involves difficult moral, legal, and policy questions. The September 11 crimes were not only domestic crimes, but also international ones. The magnitude of these crimes, the killing of over 3,000 innocent people, cries out for redress.

Yet most countries in the world, including nearly all our closest allies, have abolished capital punishment. None of the four currently operating international criminal tribunals is authorized to give a death sentence. In addition, the advent of the suicide bomber turns the deterrence justification for the death penalty inside out. Might the death penalty help create martyrs rather than discourage similar attacks? Could our imposing the death penalty increase support in the Islamic world for a1 Qaeda and other extremist groups? Furthermore, to what extent as a matter of constitutional law and policy, should a secondary actor, one who did not kill, but who was a member of a terrorist conspiracy, be subject to the death penalty? This Article examines these questions in the context of the Zacarias Moussaoui case, the supposed twentieth hijacker, who, on September 11, 2001, had been held in custody for twenty-six days.

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