Thu Apr 6, 2006 12:36 PM ET
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) - Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani described watching desperate people jump from the burning World Trade Center in emotional testimony to a jury that will determine if September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui should die.
Jurors and spectators, including relatives of the September 11 victims, also watched a video of two planes hitting the trade center and then about five minutes of footage of people jumping from it. Many spectators gasped and dabbed at tears while watching the video.
"I saw several people, I can't remember how many, jumping," Giuliani said as he described his actions that day. "There were two people right near each other. It appeared to me they were holding hands.
"Of the many memories, that's one that comes to me every day."
Last year, Moussaoui, an admitted al Qaeda member and the only person charged in the United States with the September 11 attacks, pleaded guilty to six counts of conspiracy. Three of the charges carry the death penalty.
On Monday, the 12-person jury found Moussaoui was eligible for the death penalty. The jurors agreed with the government argument that Moussaoui's lies when he was arrested three weeks before the attacks led to the deaths of nearly 3,000 people on September 11.
In this final phase of the sentencing trial, jurors will decide if Moussaoui should be sentenced to death or life in prison.
This phase will focus more on emotions than the legal arguments of the initial stage of the proceedings. The government is expected to produce dozens of witnesses, including family members of people who died in the hijackings and people who were injured in the attacks, to talk about how they were affected by the hijackings.
Giuliani, who won high praise for his handling of the September 11 crisis, was the first major witness to do so. He described where he was that day, what he saw and what he felt.
"By the time the second plane hit, we knew for sure it was a terrorist attack," he said.
Calling September 11, 2001, "the darkest day in American history," federal prosecutor Robert Spencer told the jurors they needed to sentence Moussaoui to death for his part in the disaster.
"Now it's time for you to hear the voices," he said. "In this part of the trial you will hear the voices of the victims."
But Gerald Zerkin, one of Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers, urged jurors to keep an open mind and listen to evidence that the defendant had a mental illness that caused him to be involved in the conspiracy.
He called Moussaoui a "wannabe al Qaeda suicide pilot who could not fly and did not have a crew."
The government is expected to bring scale models of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center into the courtroom as part of the dramatic effect when they present evidence from victims and witnesses of the attacks.
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
Go fry that bastard! Get 'em Rudi, get 'em!