UPDATE: Moussaoui’s new trial bid fails
on May 8, 2006 at 3:22 pm
UPDATE: A federal judge in Alexandria, Va., moved swiftly Monday afternoon to deny a request by Zacarias Moussaoui to withdraw his guilty plea to terrorist conspiracy charges so he could have a new trial. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema cited a federal rule barring a request to withdraw a guilty plea after a sentence has been imposed. The judge’s order can be found here.
The expected post-sentencing challenges in the case against Zacarias Moussaoui, the only individual convicted in the U.S. of a crime related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, began on Monday as his court-appointed attorneys filed his formal request to have his guilty plea withdrawn, and his case tried anew on the charges.
Saying they were only acting at Moussaoui’s request, the motion quoted him as saying that he pleaded guilty on April 22 last year at a time when he thought the American legal system “was completely flawed,” but has come to realize “that I can receive a fair trial.” The quotations were from an affidavit filed with the motion. The motion and the affidavit can be found here.
The motion was filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. (U.S. v. Moussaoui, docket 01-455). Last week, he was sentenced to two consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of release based on his guilty plea to six counts of terrorism conspiracy. He is expected to be held in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison in Colorado.
His signed affidavit is more contrite and temperate than virtually anything he has said in public during the course of his case. He said that his testimony at the death sentencing proceeding, that he had knowledge of and was a member of the September 11 attacks, “was a complete fabrication.”
He also declared: “I had thought that I would be sentenced to death based on the emotions and anger toward me for the deaths on September 11 but after reviewing the jury verdict [against a death sentence] and reading how the jurors set aside their emotions and disgust for me and focused on the law and the evidence that was presented during the trial, I came to understand that the jury process was more complex than I assumed…I now see that it is possible that I can receive a fair trial even with Americans as jurors…”
In a footnote, the defense lawyers noted that they are aware that a federal criminal procedure rule (Rule 11-e) “prohibits a defendant from withdrawing a guilty plea after imposition of sentence.” But, they said, they were filing the motion “given their problematic relationship with Moussaoui, of which the Court is well aware.” Moussaoui tried to fire his lawyers several times, and was completely disdainful of them throughout the time they represented him as court-appointed counsel.
