Moussaoui trial: Second day of jury deliberations

Jurors in the US trial of Zacarias Moussaoui headed into a second day of deliberations today to decide whether the September 11 conspirator should receive a death sentence or life in prison.

The jury in Alexandria, Virginia, deliberated for three hours yesterday after hearing closing arguments in the six-week trial.

Prosecutors told jurors that the decision to sentence Moussaoui to death ought to be relatively easy given the horror inflicted on 9/11 and Moussaoui’s glee - evident throughout the trial – at the destruction he helped wreak.

Nearly 3,000 people died in the September 11, 2001, attacks.

“If not this case, then when is a death sentence appropriate?” prosecutor David Novak said. “How many people have to die?”

Moussaoui’s court-appointed defence lawyers, who have been at odds with their client for years, said a death sentence would be giving Moussaoui exactly what he wants – an execution at the hands of his enemies and martyrdom.

Moussaoui has said at various times that he believes being executed by the Americans may grant him a path to paradise in the afterlife.