More than 20 years after 9/11, a disgraceful plea agreement is in the works
Having never before heard of the show Forensic Files, I’m finally catching up with it. In episode after episode, we see how science helps catch killers. And in episode after episode, despite heinous murders, we learn that the murderers avoided the death penalty. In Biden’s America, that works on a macro scale, too, because the administration is apparently contemplating plea agreements with the 9/11 mastermind and four others, sparing them the death penalty.
On 9/11, Al Qaeda terrorists killed 2,977 people by crashing planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, as well as by hijacking United Flight 93, which saw the passengers die in a fight to prevent the terrorists from hitting the United States Capitol. It was the largest case of murder in American history.
At the end of the day, when people were still burning with white-hot anger, the United States was able to track down Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man who masterminded this mass murder, along with four other men associated with the deaths on 9/11. Then, the bureaucracy kicked in. Twenty-two years after the 9/11 attacks, those men are still alive and untried.
Image: 9/11 (cropped) by Robert J. Fisch. CC BY-SA 2.0.
This long delay is the kind of thing that reminds you that the Sixth Amendment’s right to a speedy trial doesn’t just benefit the accused, who are not supposed to languish in jail, deprived of their civil rights, while witnesses die and memories fade. (And yes, I am thinking of the January 6 defendants, who are being physically abused while they are being deprived of that fundamental right.) The right to a speedy trial also benefits society at large. Justice delayed is justice denied for the victims as well as for the accused. In the case of 9/11, the families of those who died and all Americans were victims of that horrible crime.
It turns out that the Biden government is finally thinking about taking steps to resolve the fate of the last five 9/11 defendants. (And the Bush, Obama, and Trump governments all should hang their heads in shame that it’s devolved on Biden’s administration to address this.) But typically for the Biden government, the proposed resolution is disgraceful:
The Pentagon and FBI have notified some of the families of victims of the 9/11 attacks that suspected terrorist mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other defendants could be spared the death penalty under plea agreements being considered by the Biden administration.
The notice came in the form of a letter, obtained by the Associated Press, that was sent to 9/11 families as the government explores how to resolve the more than decade-long prosecution of the alleged terrorists.
“The Office of the Chief Prosecutor has been negotiating and is considering entering into pre-trial agreements,” the letter informs families, adding that while no plea agreement “has been finalized, and may never be finalized, it is possible that a [pre-trial agreement] in this case would remove the possibility of the death penalty.”
The Associated Press reports that in the letter, dated Aug. 1, military prosecutors pledge to consider the views of the 9/11 families before accepting any plea deals, and the note asks recipients to respond to the FBI’s victim services division by Monday with any comments or questions about the potential agreements.
It doesn’t matter that the prosecutors are willing to consider the families’ feelings. What matters is that they’re even contemplating a plan that will let these men live out their lives. And murderers understand that their own lives are precious. I can't tell you the number of Forensic File episodes that end with killers freely confessing to their crimes in exchange for life in prison rather than the electric chair. They don’t want you to live, but they definitely want to live themselves.
The ancients understood that it is profoundly wrong to coddle the wicked. Proverbs 18:5 is clear: “It is not good to be partial to the wicked and so deprive the innocent of justice.” (New International Version translation.) The rabbis whose wisdom is in the Talmud (Midrash) put it more simply: “If you are kind to the cruel, you will end up being cruel to the kind.”
Currently, for reasons I cannot comprehend, the Biden administration is contemplating being partial to people whose wickedness murdered 2,977 innocents. (And, inevitably, by being a massive hinge-point in history, their wickedness also led to the disastrous world in which we live today.) If the administration follows through on this proposal, this will be an act of unfathomable cruelty to the victims’ families and to America as a whole.