A stunning development at the opening of the fifth day of the Moussaoui trial

unbelievable... when you think things with the bush administration simply can't get any more bizarre...

An angry federal judge unexpectedly recessed the sentencing trial of confessed al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui on Monday to consider whether government violations of her rules against coaching witnesses should remove the death penalty as an option.

The stunning development came at the opening of the fifth day of the trial after the government informed the judge and the defense over the weekend that a lawyer for the Transportation Security Administration had coached four Federal Aviation Administration witnesses in violation of the rule set by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema. The rule was that no witness should hear trial testimony in advance.

"This is the second significant error by the government affecting the constitutional rights of this defendant and more importantly the integrity of the criminal justice system of the United States in the context of a death case," Brinkema told lawyers outside the presence of the jury.

[...]

Brinkema noted that Thursday, Novak asked a question that she ruled out of order after the defense said the question should result in a mistrial. In that question, Novak suggested that Moussaoui might have had some responsibility to go back to the
FBI, after he got a lawyer, and then confess his terrorist ties.

Brinkema warned the government at that point that it was treading on shaky legal ground because she knew of no case where a failure to act resulted in a death penalty as a matter of law.

Even prosecutor Novak conceded that the witness coaching was "horrendously wrong."

According to descriptions by the lawyers in court, it appeared that a female Transportation Security Administration attorney who had attended closed hearings in the case went over with the four coming witnesses the opening statements at the trial, the government's strategy and even the transcript of the questioning of an FBI agent on the first day.

"She was at the Classified Information Act procedures hearing and she should have known it was wrong," Novak said.

when a federal judge says something like this, you know it's bad...

"In all the years I've been on the bench, I have never seen such an egregious violation of a rule on witnesses," she said.

and, not only that, but the government's case apparently rests almost entirely on those witnesses...

Prosecutor David Novak replied that removing the FAA witnesses would "exclude half the government's case."

did i mention i found this unbelievable...?

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