At the end of last school year, I got pretty hardcore into the Zacarias Moussaoui (so called '20th hijacker') case researching a paper I was writing for my Supreme Court history class. It's kind of an absurd case and there's rarely a dull moment. For most of it, Moussaoui represented himself. He's a native French speaker, but can speak English pretty well and seems to be pretty intelligent. He really enjoys making a mockery of the courts in his spare time. Early on he entered a request for a fully loaded 747 to Afghanistan (good idea maybe?). He often referred to John Ashcroft as 'World Terrorist Champion' and even referenced the movie Deliverance in one of his briefs (which he always prefaces with 'IN THE NAME OF ALLAH').

Anyway, he's in a bit of a tough position because the main witness he's relying on is Kalheid Shiek Mohammed (completely mispelled) or just KSM, who may be the most high profile terrorist that the government currently has in its custody. As a result, the government is very averse to there being any direct communication between the two; I guess they're afraid KSM will tell Moussaoui something and Moussaoui will secretly encode the message in his legal briefs (which are published online here: http://notablecases.vaed.uscourts.gov/1:01-cr-00455/DocketSheet1.html). This was a huge stumbling block for a lot of the case, and eventually they decided that the government had to provide summaries of transcripts of testimony from KSM. This is a pretty shitty deal for Moussaoui since the government can censor whatever information it finds inconvenient or just not ask KSM any questions pertinent to Moussaoui's defense. Seems like a more interactive process would have been much better, but it's too late now.

I have assumed until now that the government would be using its control over the witness and his testimony to manipulate the case. And just today it came out that the government was improperly coaching witnesses before the trial, which is a violation of a previously set down rule about witnesses. Basically, none of the witnesses are to be given transcripts of the trial before they testify so when they're on the stand they're giving their honest, untainted answers. But the government has been sending FAA and TSA witnesses e-mails that make reference to and directly quote the transcripts from the trial. The particular issue concerned whether the government would have been able to stop the September 11th attacks had Moussaoui told them about the plans to hijack planes and fly them into buildings. The FAA witness seemed to beleive that they wouldn't neccessarily have. I tend to agree with this since the general belief before 9/11 was that if your plane gets hijacked, you just stay calm and eventually they'll land the plane and you'll be alright. A warning from some obscure French guy wouldn't have fixed this, it really had to be shocked into people. Furthermore, the government may have lacked the appropriate resolve to enforce a no box-cutter rule vigorously. The government, in a clear violation of court rules, was trying to convince the witness otherwise before her testimony.

Possible remedies to this include dismissal of the case, exclusion of the witness, special jury instructions, or striking the possibility of using the death penalty as a punishment. The defense supports striking the death penalty, while the government amazingly supports no remedy. We'll see how things play out later this week.