Moussaoui found eligible for death

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- A federal jury found Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui eligible for the death penalty yesterday and will now decide whether he should die for his role in the deadliest terrorist strike in US history.

After 17 hours of deliberation over four days, the jury concluded that Moussaoui's lies to federal agents in August 2001 allowed the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon to go forward. The verdict sends Moussaoui's death penalty trial to a second phase, in which prosecutors will argue that he should be executed while defense lawyers try to spare his life.

As the verdict was read, Moussaoui ignored instruction to stand. He smiled slightly and mumbled softly to himself. As he was led from the courtroom, he glared at spectators and yelled: ''You'll never get my blood! God curse you all!"

In the third row, Rosemary Dillard of Alexandria, whose husband, Eddie, sat next to a hijacker on the flight that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, gripped the seat in front of her, smiled, and exhaled. Outside the courthouse, she pumped her fist in front of television cameras and declared that Moussaoui deserves to die. ''Eddie knows what happened. He's here," she said.

The emotions will only get stronger as the government presses forward with its quest to secure legal justice for the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. Beginning Thursday, prosecutors plan to overwhelm the jury with horrific evidence of the destruction of that day, including videotape of people jumping from the World Trade Center and tapes of people inside the twin towers calling 911, sources familiar with the case said. Prosecutors have also signaled in court documents their intention to introduce the name of every victim and as many of their photographs as possible.

At the federal courthouse in Boston, where families of 9/11 victims watched the proceedings via closed circuit television, five women who lost mothers or husbands in the terrorist attacks expressed frustration and disappointment, saying they didn't think the government proved that Moussaoui could have stopped the events of 9/11. They wanted the trial to end yesterday with a verdict that put him behind bars for life.

''I'm shocked they came to this," said Stephanie Holland-Brodney of Wayland, whose mother, Cora Holland, was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11, adding that she thinks the jury found Moussaoui eligible for the death penalty because ''people so badly want to blame somebody for this. . . . [But] this was not the person to pin it on. I think if given the opportunity, he would have killed Americans. But I absolutely do not believe he was part of the plot that day."

Christie Coombs of Abington, whose husband, Jeff, was also killed on Flight 11, said she was frustrated by the verdict because she's convinced Moussaoui was ''an Al Qaeda wannabe" and that jurors are on a runaway train headed for the death penalty.

''Let him rot in jail," said Coombs, fighting back tears as she voiced concern about whether she'll be able to endure sitting in court for hours, listening to victim impact statements in the next phase of the trial.

''Killing him is not going to bring any of our loves ones back," said Cindy McGinty of Foxborough, a mother of two boys, whose husband, Michael, was attending a business meeting in one of the World Trade Center towers when he was killed. ''This man is not going to show remorse and the next few weeks are only going to bring more pain to my family."

Carie Lemack of Framingham, who came to the courthouse carrying a photo of her mother, Judy Larocque of Sudbury, who was also killed on Flight 11, said, ''Moussaoui is getting exactly what he wants. . . . He wants to go down in history as a man who was part of 9/11, a horrific event. He wasn't. He was in a jail cell."

But one woman was pleased with the verdict. ''I feel that he needs to have the death penalty," said Katherine Bailey of Lynnfield, whose husband, Garnet ''Ace" Bailey, a hockey scout and former Boston Bruin who was on United Airlines Flight 175 when it crashed into one of the towers. ''I feel he's totally evil and I don't want him in our lives. . . . We need an end to this."

Defense lawyers will seek to introduce mitigating factors such as Moussaoui's troubled childhood and evidence that he is mentally unstable, court documents show. Once again, their efforts may be hamstrung by their client, whose admissions when he testified last week -- he acknowledged lying to agents and said he had planned to fly a hijacked airplane into the White House on Sept. 11 -- may have doomed his defense.

Moussaoui, 37, is expected to testify again, and it is unknown what he might say. He has objected to efforts by his lawyers, with whom he does not speak, to introduce evidence about his mental state.

Although yesterday's verdict means only that Moussaoui is eligible for death under federal law, legal specialists said the emotional nature of the coming evidence is a major advantage for the government. They said prosecutors have survived their most difficult hurdle: the complicated argument they made in recent weeks that Moussaoui was culpable for Sept. 11 even though he was sitting in jail at the time.

''Everything is now stacked in favor of the government," said Andrew McBride, a former federal prosecutor in Alexandria who is following the case. ''You're going to see pictures of New York City and the Pentagon you've never seen before, hear from survivors, officials in New York about the impact. What do they have on the other side?"

Eric Muller, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, said the coming testimony ''will be cathartic, draining and emotionally riveting. It's going to be a tremendously significant moment in the lives of anyone who was directly affected by that day."

Shelley Murphy of the Globe staff contributed to this report.