Cream-Puff Justice

From IBD:
Posted 3/23/2006

Terror: When an admitted al-Qaida operative pleads guilty to conspiracy to murder thousands of innocents, it's obvious he deserves the death penalty — except to extremist federal judges like Leonie Brinkema.

Zacarias Moussaoui, widely called the 20th hijacker of 9-11, was arrested for immigration violations by the FBI less than a month before the attacks, after suspicions arose about his attending a Minnesota flight school. Last year, he admitted to conspiring with al-Qaida in the plot.

The case against him is solid as a rock: The 9-11 attacks could have been stopped if Moussaoui had confessed instead of lying to the FBI after his arrest.

Yet U.S. District Judge Brinkema is mulling whether to dismiss the U.S. government's request to impose the death sentence. The reason? A technicality: A government lawyer e-mailed trial transcripts to seven potential witnesses, violating a court order.

That attorney, Carla Martin, works for the Transportation Security Administration and has reportedly been subpoenaed to appear before Brinkema's court on Monday.

Brinkema claims Martin's misconduct "affects the integrity of the criminal justice system." But if the judge forbids the death penalty, ending the case and by default letting Moussaoui receive the lesser sentence of life in prison, it will be Brinkema who has blemished our criminal justice system. Americans — and our enemies — will have seen our courts let a mass murderer off the hook.

Who, after all, is more deserving of capital punishment than the likes of Moussaoui, who smiled in court during accounts of the four jets plowing into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon?

Brinkema used a different excuse to save Moussaoui from execution in 2003, after the government violated her wishes to let Moussaoui's attorneys interview captured al-Qaida leaders who they believed would clear him. A higher court wisely overruled her.

Furthermore, in this case there's a clear remedy: Moussaoui's lawyers can address any and all problems caused by Martin's e-mails during questioning of the witnesses. Then it can be left up to the jury whether Moussaoui should die for his crimes.

But Brinkema is not known for letting ordinary Americans decide things for themselves. Placed on the federal bench by Bill Clinton in 1993, she is also responsible for extreme rulings regarding Internet pornography.

In her 1998 Urofsky ruling, she contended it was unconstitutional to bar state employees from spending time at work on their computers viewing pornography. She was unanimously overturned by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals the next year.

Her Loudoun ruling the same year prevented a local library from blocking sexual explicit Web sites on its computers — even to protect employees from sexual harassment. The library chose to remove all computers instead of appealing.

Brinkema's extremism teaches a clear lesson: Even at the lower- court level it's vitally important to appoint judges who enforce the law, not make it.