Alexandria, Va. – Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani described the opening horrors of Sept. 11, 2001, to Zacarias Moussaoui’s death penalty trial today, saying he was unwilling to believe people were jumping to their deaths from the World Trade Center until he saw it with his own eyes.
He said the image of two people jumping together, appearing to hold hands, sticks with him every day. Moussaoui affected a look of boredom when the prosecution played video of victims falling to their deaths.
Jurors watched intently; some family members in the courtroom hung their heads with reddened eyes during some of the testimony.
Giuliani took the stand after prosecutor Rob Spencer braced jurors for the painful testimony they were going to hear over the next few weeks. His presentation opened the final phase of the drawn-out trial that will determine whether Moussaoui is executed or sent to prison for life.
Giuliani said that when he arrived at the scene, his deputy told him how bad the situation was and people were jumping from the high floors of the towers. “I concluded or hoped he was wrong,” he said.
But then he saw people falling and “I froze. I realized in that couple of seconds, it switched my thinking and emotions. I said, ‘We’re in uncharted territory.”‘ Extra marshals were on hand when Giuliani walked past Moussaoui and took the stand.
Spencer argued that the voices of the victims of the attacks and their anguished families should be all the jury needs to hear to decide whether Moussaoui, an acknowledged al-Qaeda terrorist, should die for his crimes.
Spencer described one call from a woman on the 83rd floor of the second tower to fall. “The floor is completely engulfed,” she said. “We’re on the floor and we can’t breathe…. I don’t see any more air…I’m going to die, aren’t I?” Moussaoui, 37, is the only person charged in this country in the Sept. 11 attacks. On Monday, the jury concluded that Moussaoui was directly responsible for at least one death on that day and is therefore eligible for execution.
His trial is to hear the cockpit voice recordings from United Flight 93, which crashed into a western Pennsylvania field on Sept.
11, after passengers fought back against the hijackers. The tape has never been heard publicly.
Prosecutors also planned to summon family members to testify and they were poised to play phone calls from people trapped in the World Trade Center and speaking their last words to 911 operators.
“You cannot understand the magnitude of that day unless you hear it from the victims themselves,” Spencer said. Moussaoui smiled several times when the prosecution mentioned his enthusiasm for the attacks.
Defense lawyer Gerald Zerkin acknowledged that evidence on the impact on the victims will be overwhelming. But he urged jurors to “somehow maintain your equilibrium …. You must nevertheless open yourselves to the possibility of a sentence other than death.” Zerkin described how Moussaoui grew up with little religious training and fell under the influence of radical Muslims when he traveled to London in hopes of becoming a businessman.
Zerkin alluded to a history of schizophrenia in Moussaoui’s family and said several doctors hired by the defense believe he is mentally ill.
Spencer countered: “It was his choice to become a terrorist and it was a choice he was proud of.” Giuliani described “a minor earthquake” when the first tower fell. He had just gotten to a nearby building that briefly served as a command center and was told the White House was on the line.
He spoke to a deputy political director who confirmed to Giuliani that the Pentagon had been hit. The mayor asked to speak to President Bush, who was at a school in Florida, and was told instead that Vice President Dick Cheney would be getting back to him.
Just as he was about to be connected to Cheney, the lines went dead and the building shook, he said. Giuliani looked outside and someone told him, “The tower went down.” He said it was “like the storm scene in ‘The Wizard of Oz’. …
Like a white cloud, with things flowing through the street.” At one point, Giuliani said he had been told that up to 10 airplanes were unaccounted for, and he worried that the city might be hit multiple times even after the Twin Towers had been hit.
Prosecutors received the judge’s approval Wednesday to play cockpit voice recordings from United Flight 93.
Relatives of the Flight 93 passengers were permitted to listen to the 30-minute cockpit recording in April 2002. At that time, the government had grief counselors on hand and warned the families that graphic details would be audible.
While the recording will be played for the jury and the courtroom gallery, it is unclear whether it will be publicly released. Most court exhibits are being made available to the public, but U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema is giving Flight 93 family members until Tuesday to request that the recording not be distributed except as evidence in court.
Moussaoui was in a Minnesota jail on 9/11. Nevertheless, the jury concluded that Moussaoui could have thwarted or at least minimized the attacks if he had confessed his al-Qaeda membership and his plan to hijack aircraft when federal agents arrested him in August 2001 after his efforts to obtain flight training aroused suspicion.
