Show Restraint?

Judge Leonie Brinkema has been calling for the prosecution to show restraint in their case to provide the jury with sufficient reason to find Moussaoui should be on the receiving end of the death penalty.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema has urged prosecutors to show restraint, but it has proved difficult to blunt the emotional impact as families of 9/11 victims tell their stories to jurors in Moussaoui death-penalty trial.

Moussaoui is the only person charged in this country in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. The jury deciding his fate has already declared him eligible for the death penalty by determining that his actions caused at least one death on 9/11.

The jury also heard from 43-year-old Juan Rivero, a retired Port Authority of New York and New Jersey policeman, who described his rescue efforts at the World Trade Center.

At one point, as the second tower collapsed, he testified he was running from the Trade Center complex toward the Hudson River when the debris cloud engulfed him.

Moussaoui shouted “Burn all Pentagon next time!,” as he was being led from court. His lawyers have been trying to paint him as being mentally unstable, and this article now says that his lawyers are trying to show that he is inflating his role in history from a minor role to a major player. They subpoenaed Richard Reid in order to show that Moussaoui is lying about his role in the 9/11 attacks. The prosecution is scheduled to wrap Thursday, with the defense to begin putting on its case at that time.

I can sympathize with the view that providing the vast amounts of emotional evidence - testimony from friends, family, survivors, plus video and audio from that day may overwhelm the jurors, but one has to also remember that this is a mere fraction of the damage wrought by Moussaoui's spiritual brethren in al Qaeda. We're hearing from little more than 1% of the victims who died on 9/11 (2,986 people were murdered on 9/11).

I say that's showing restraint enough. There's no reason to show anything other than an unvarnished and raw audio and video from that day. We need to see this - as much as to make sure that Moussaoui meets his deserved justice, but to remind people of what he and his ilk did.