Is He Deluded, Insane, Or Pure Evil?

After hearing -- and seeing -- closing arguments Monday from both sides in the death penalty trial of confessed al-Qaeda conspirator Zacharias Moussaoui, jurors deliberated for three hours on whether to sentence the 37-year-old Frenchman to death, before retiring for the evening.

In their last attempt to sway jurors to their side, prosecutors again displayed some of the most gruesome and emotionally-charged images of the 9/11 attacks, which the government maintains could have been prevented or at least curtailed had Moussaoui told the officials who arrested him in August 2001 some or all of what Moussaoui says he knew of the impending attacks.

"Can you imagine how horrible it was to die in those buildings and on those planes?" asked Prosecutor David Raskin after showing the jury images that allowed them to do just that, according to Forbes.

"No one can give them justice but you," added Prosecutor David Novak. "You are the voice of this nation."

In comparison, the defense -- who has maintained Moussaoui is at best too troubled, at worst too deranged to be taken at his word -- asked the jury to deny Moussaoui's delusional quest to be made a martyr. They argued life in prison would be a more fitting punishment for the man whom even other al-Qaeda operatives have denied played any part in 9/11... or any other terrorist attack.

Calling Moussaoui "a veritable caricature of an al-Qaida terrorist" and "the operative who couldn't shoot straight," defense attorney Gerald Zerkin once again presented his client as a Keystone Kops-like portrait of terror, "the only al-Qaida operative inept enough to be captured before 9/11."

The government "has held out the prospect of Moussaoui's execution as the cure" for the pain of the victims, Zerkin argued. But "his death cannot and will not make them better."

"He is baiting you into it," Zerkin added on Moussaoui's own quest to become a martyr. "He came to America to die in jihad and you are his last chance." Instead, Zerkin told jurors, they could "confine him to a miserable existence until he dies and give him not the death of a jihadist he wants, but the long slow death of a common criminal."

Forbes reports the Moussaoui case is the fourth time Zerkin and Raskin have faced each other in a death penalty trial... and Zerkin has "won" three of those cases, getting his clients life in jail instead.

Besides presenting their last attempts to sway the jury in their favor, both men used their closing arguments to take final swipes at the other side, as well.

Novak called testimony offered earlier by defense psychiatrists that Moussaoui was a delusional schizophrenic as "a bunch of psycho-hogwash." Perhaps forgetting that one of the jurors is a mental health professional, Novak also said the diagnosis was a "magical schizophrenia" that Moussaoui could turn on or off and that "didn't appear in front of you all."

Perhaps a sign of that "magical schizophrenia" was Moussaoui's nodding when Zerkin said Moussaoui believes President Bush will release him before leaving office in 2009. Zerkin said that was a sign Moussaoui was truly deluded; Novak argued it was a religious belief.

Now, Moussaoui's fate is in the hands of the jury... the same nine men and three women who earlier found him responsible for at least one death on 9/11, even though he was jailed at the time. The jurors were expected to reconvene Tuesday to pour over the 42-page verdict form, that also requires them to say what factors led to their decision.

As for Moussaoui, throughout the day he showed much the same contempt for the process as he had in the past, calling out "never get me, America," "our children will carry on the fight," and "there's more than one way to skin the American pigs" between breaks in the proceedings.

FMI: www.usdoj.gov