ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Zacarias Moussaoui was a clown who could not keep his mouth shut, according to his old al-Qaida boss, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. But Moussaoui was surprisingly tame when tried for the 9/11 attacks — never turning the courtroom into the circus of anti-U.S. tirades that some fear Mohammed will create at his trial in New York.
And that wasn't the only surprise during Moussaoui's six-week 2006 sentencing trial here — a proceeding that might foreshadow how the upcoming 9/11 trial in New York will go.
Skeptics who feared prosecutors would be hamstrung by how much evidence was secret were stunned at the enormous amount of classified data that was scrubbed, under pressure from the judge, into a public version acceptable to both sides.
Prosecutors were surprised when they failed to get the death penalty — by the vote of one juror.
No one was more surprised than Moussaoui himself: At the end he concluded an al-Qaida member like him could get a fair trial in a U.S. court.
"I had thought that I would be sentenced to death based on the emotions and anger toward me for the deaths on Sept. 11," Moussaoui said in an appeal deposition taken after he was sentenced to life in prison. "(B)ut after reviewing the jury verdict and reading how the jurors set aside their emotions and disgust for me and focused on the law and the evidence ... I now see that it is possible that I can receive a fair trial."
All that suggests the dire predictions of critics and confident assertions of proponents should be viewed skeptically as prosecutors prepare to put Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and four of his alleged henchmen on trial in a civilian federal court.
The five had been headed for a military tribunal at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until Attorney General Eric Holder announced last week he would charge them in civilian court and expects to seek the death penalty.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who presided over Moussaoui's trial — the first in this country over 9/11 — believes it proved federal courts can handle terror cases: "I've reached the conclusion that the system does work," she said in 2008.
The first lesson from Moussaoui's case: Don't expect a speedy trial.
Moussaoui was charged in December 2001 with conspiracy for his role. The case churned through years of pretrial hearings and appeals as judges sought to balance national security with Moussaoui's constitutional rights, often over what evidence could be used.
Documents later introduced at trial showed Moussaoui and Mohammed were well acquainted and Mohammed told interrogators he planned to use Moussaoui as a pilot for a second wave of hijacked jetliner attacks — plans that were eventually aborted. But Mohammed considered Moussaoui a problematic operative, who took instructions poorly and recklessly ignored directions to minimize communications.
Eventually, in 2005, Moussaoui pleaded guilty to conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers. Under the complex rules for federal death penalty cases, a separate sentencing trial was held in 2006 to determine whether Moussaoui would lose his life or spend the rest of it in prison. In the first phase, jurors concluded Moussaoui's actions were eligible for the death penalty, but in the second phase they spared his life — thanks to a lone holdout juror.
During the long run-up to trial, Moussaoui's abusive tirades in handwritten motions and outbursts in hearings created concerns the jury trial would devolve into chaos. Brinkema threatened to lock him in a separate room watching by video if he tried that.
Mindful of that threat, Moussaoui sat quietly at his separate table flanked by deputy marshals. On the few occasions he was called upon to speak, Brinkema kept him tightly on topic.
His theatrics were confined to one-liners — like "Victory for Moussaoui! God curse you all!" — that he tossed off to spectators as he left the courtroom after the jury departed for lunch or the day.
In military tribunal hearings at Guantanamo, Mohammed also showed a propensity for grandstanding. In one letter released by that tribunal, he referred to the attacks as a "noble victory" and urged U.S. authorities to "pass your sentence on me and give me no respite."
One of Moussaoui's lawyers, Edward MacMahon, isn't worried about Mohammed's behavior in court. "Federal judges deal all the time with defendants who try to disrupt cases," he said.

MacMahon, himself the target of some of Moussaoui's epithets, said he thought the trial "was a very dignified process."

Lead prosecutor Rob Spencer, now with Lockheed Martin Corp., said the Moussaoui trial allowed the public to see that Moussaoui took pride in the terror created by the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

"A valuable part of the Moussaoui trial was that we got an unvarnished, public view of this guy ... of what we're up against" in dealing with al-Qaida terrorists, Spencer said.

Sorting through classified evidence should be easier in the upcoming case, experts said. First, the Moussaoui case generated detailed appellate rulings to guide lower courts. Second, much that was highly sensitive in 2003 may be far less so now.

On the other hand, there was no allegation Moussaoui was tortured into confessing, but coerced confessions or statements might be significant at Mohammed's trial. U.S. civilian courts bar evidence obtained under coercion, which could exclude what Mohammed told investigators after, as the Justice Department has acknowledged, he was waterboarded 183 times.

But there are also statements Mohammed made much later bragging about his role, and statements by others subjected to less harsh interrogation methods that fewer people consider to be torture, so there's grist for much legal argument.

Paul McNulty, U.S. attorney here when Moussaoui was prosecuted, said there is a crucial difference in the two cases: Moussaoui pleaded guilty, so the sentencing trial focused only on his punishment and there was no chance he'd go free. No one knows whether any New York defendants will contest their guilt.

McNulty wondered whether the public is willing to accept the chance of an acquittal.

McNulty expects New York judges to be as tough as Brinkema on issues like ensuring defendants access to witnesses. "It could get complicated very quickly," he said.

"It's not supposed to be easy," defense counsel MacMahon said. "The law makes it very difficult to obtain a death sentence. The government basically has to pitch a perfect game to win a death penalty."

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Barakat and Sniffen, who reported from Washington, covered Moussaoui's trial.

TUESDAY, Nov. 17 (HealthDay News) -- Children who are fearless at
3 years of age might just be poised for a life of crime.

According to a new study, poor fear conditioning at the tender age of
3 can predispose that person to break the law as an adult. Yet other
factors, such as education of the parents, large family size, nutrition,
physical activity, configuration of the household and other elements also
play a role, the researchers concluded.

"There's no 100 percent correspondence between conditioning deficits
and crime: Not all poor conditioners will become criminals and not all
criminals have the early fear conditioning deficits," explained study
author Yu Gao, a research associate in the department of criminology at
the University of Pennsylvania. His findings are published in the Nov. 16
online issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Specifically, what Gao and his associates set out to determine is
whether dysfunction of the amygdala, an almond-shaped mass that resides
deep in the human brain and is linked to fear conditioning as well as
emotions and mental state, leads to an inherent intrepidness and disregard
for the law.

Twenty years ago, the research team tested almost 1,800 children who
were 3 years old from Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island off the coast of
southeastern Africa, by exposing them to two sets of sounds, one with a
short shrill noise, and the other deeper in pitch and with a pleasant
tone, and then measuring the children's physical responses through an
electrode attached to their index and middle fingers. Sweating upon
hearing the loud noise indicated a sense of fear, while no sweat meant the
child lacked fear -- that is, had poor fear conditioning.

Two decades later, using court records, Gao and his team tracked down
137 study participants -- 131 males and six females -- who had committed
serious crimes involving property, drugs, violence and driving. These
individuals had shown an absence of fear during testing at age 3, whereas
274 study participants who had grown to adulthood without a criminal
record had displayed typical fear responses.

Experts agreed that the findings don't constitute a cause-and-effect
situation, but hailed the study for its longevity and what the work adds
to what is known about how childhood factors influence adult behavior.

"Any time you have a 20-year study, that's significant," said Dr.
Elissa P. Benedek, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based psychiatrist who has worked
in private practice with children and adults for more than 40 years and is
a past president of the American Psychiatric Association.

"It's good for putting another link in the chain in terms of what is
early brain dysfunction, and what increases the risk for such behaviors as
attention-deficit disorder and criminal activity. It's another link back
to whatever we all ready know about early brain dysfunction that may cause
problems later in life," Benedek added.

So what do the results mean for individuals with fear conditioning
deficits and their loved ones, and for society at large? It's a wake-up
call about potential problems, said Gao and other experts in the field. To
enhance the proper working of the amygdala, which is believed to reduce
criminal behavior in later life, enrichment programs are essential.

In fact, according to Gao, some at-risk children between the ages of 3
and 5 who have benefited from those programs, which include sound
nutrition, adequate physical exercise and cognitive brain stimulation, had
shown an improvement in brain functioning by age 11 that reduced the
chances of criminal behavior by 35 percent 20 years later.

Addressing parental concerns, Benedek added: "Don't be discouraged if
your child has early brain dysfunction. It doesn't mean that he or she is
going to grow up and be a criminal. The brain can change and grow."

More information

For more on the causes of violent behavior among children, go to the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health.

ROME – Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe used the U.N. summit on world hunger Tuesday to lash out at the West and defend land reforms blamed for plunging his people into starvation.
Addressing the summit hosted by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, Mugabe said the policy under which thousands of white-owned commercial farms were seized in 2000 was a quest for "equity and justice."
He blamed the subsequent meltdown of Zimbabwe's economy on "hostile interventions" by "neocolonialist enemies" that have imposed sanctions on his regime.
Western countries have slapped travel bans and asset freezes on Mugabe and his top aides. The ban does not apply to United Nations summits and Mugabe has attended several Food and Agriculture Organization meetings in the last years, always using the podium to attack Western countries that accuse him of undermining democracy.
Mugabe has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980. He was forced into a power-sharing agreement with longtime opposition leader Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai after elections last year that were inconclusive and marred by violence blamed on Mugabe supporters.
Although the coalition government has brought some stability and economic recovery to Zimbabwe, the opposition continues to denounce violence by Mugabe's allies, while the president's ZANU-PF party has accused Tsvangirai's forces of not doing enough to persuade Western nations to lift the sanctions.
Mugabe's speech at Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters, his take on why 1 billion people worldwide are hungry, was peppered with his habitual rhetoric.
"We face very hostile interventions by these states which have imposed unilateral sanctions on us," he said. "This has had a negative impact on our farmers, who, according to our neocolonialist enemies, must fail so as to damn the land reforms we have undertaken."
Mugabe ended his speech with a demand that Western countries "remove their illegal and inhuman sanctions on my country and its people."

As Hollywood closed specialty divisions that aimed for quality and personal stories, as studios focus more and more on superhero sagas and action blockbusters, cinema fans have rightly wondered, who's left to make great American movies?
For one, the makers of "Precious: Based on the Novel `Push' by Sapphire," who assembled some of the unlikeliest ingredients — Mariah Carey, Mo'Nique, and a lead actress plucked from an anonymous casting call — to create a wondrous work of art.
The film isn't easy to watch and will test your tolerance for despicable behavior as a long history of physical abuse and incest unfolds involving an illiterate, obese Harlem schoolgirl.
Yet "Precious" — both the film and its grandly resilient title character — will steal your heart. Lee Daniels, in just his second film as director, crafts a story that rises from the depths of despair to a place of genuine hope.
This isn't a fairy tale. "Precious" doesn't strain to present some happy-ever-after transformation that simply never could happen considering the harsh reality in which it's set.
Rather, the film reflects an inner spirit everyone can recognize, that role-playing game we indulge in to get us through our big and small hard times, imagining our lives are different, better. That we are different and better.
Claireece "Precious" Jones literally wills it to be so, and as played in a phenomenal screen debut by Gabourey Sidibe, she makes an utterly believable and electrifying rise from an urban abyss of ignorance and neglect.
Adapted from the novel "Push" by Sapphire — who taught reading and writing for eight years in Harlem, Brooklyn and the Bronx, to students like Precious and her peers — the film is simultaneously tender and savage as Precious learns to apply that simple verb: Push yourself, push your boundaries, if others try to stop you, push them out of the way.
(The film debuted as "Push" at January's Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the top jury prize and the award as the audience's favorite film; the title was changed to avoid confusion with Dakota Fanning's sci-fi adventure "Push," released last February.)
When we first encounter her, Precious is pregnant with her second child by her own father, who raped her repeatedly while her mother, Mary (Mo'Nique), looked the other way and later heaped abuse on her daughter out of jealousy and spite.
To call Mary a viper would disrespect the other human reptiles that walk among us. She is the lowest of the low, a woman in need of new and nastier adjectives than loathsome and contemptible to do her justice.
Mo'Nique, best known for raunchy, low-brow comedy (and who coincidentally played a character named Precious in Daniel's directing debut, "Shadowboxer"), embodies Mary perfectly, not as a villain but a woman too ignorant, too unaware to fathom what a horrible person she is. When Mo'Nique's Mary says she did her best for Precious, you believe that she believes it. Mo'Nique should win an Oscar for this performance.
The reverse of Mary is Blu Rain (the radiant Paula Patton), a teacher at an alternative school where Precious finally begins to learn after years of getting good grades while remaining unable to read and write at public school.
Blu is chief among the guardian angels that come into Precious' life. Her benefactors also including Lenny Kravitz as a maternity-ward nurse, Sherri Shepherd as a worker at her new school and a room full of vibrant young women who become more like sisters than classmates to Precious.
Carey delivers warmly and honestly in a small role as a social worker, a surprising turnaround from her laughable musical bomb "Glitter."
While veteran performers reveal previously unsuspected depth, Sidibe is an out-of-nowhere revelation. She was in college in the Bronx, where she had appeared in some campus theater, when she turned up for open auditions on "Precious."
Sidibe's Precious is scary, funny, fragile, willful, exasperating, ferocious, sweet, indignant, joyful — while at heart remaining a little girl in desperate need of just one hand to hold, one finger to point her the way. She and Mo'Nique both could be going home with Oscars.
Geoffrey Fletcher's screenplay mirrors Sapphire's first-person novel, allowing Precious to blossom in her own words as her confidence builds as a writer.

Daniels seamlessly blends the stark awfulness of Precious' life with fantasy sequences in which she's a star, interviewed at red-carpet premieres, performing at the Apollo, then ultimately and lovingly coaxes his heroine into a better reality somewhere in between.

Since its Sundance premiere, the film has gained its own guardian angels. Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry were so charmed by the film, they signed on as executive producers, while Mary J. Blige wrote a song to add to the soundtrack.

You could call "Precious" one of those little miracles of independent film, but you'd be wrong. "Precious" and all its disparate ingredients constitute one very big miracle — and a glimpse of what American cinema still can be, whether or not Hollywood cares about making good films.

"Precious," a Lionsgate release, is rated R for child abuse including sexual assault, and pervasive language. Running time: 109 minutes. Four stars out of four.

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Motion Picture Association of America rating definitions:

G — General audiences. All ages admitted.

PG — Parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.

PG-13 — Special parental guidance strongly suggested for children under 13. Some material may be inappropriate for young children.

R — Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

NC-17 — No one under 17 admitted.