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Jurors say most of panel voted for death

From Phil Hirschkorn
CNN New York Bureau

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A majority of the jurors who convicted four men in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania wanted a death sentence for the two terrorists who were eligible for capital punishment.

The revelation came from two female jurors, known only as Juror 2 and Juror 7, who sat down with reporters in the courthouse cafeteria after attending Thursday's sentencing session.

Mohamed al-'Owhali, Mohamed Odeh, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed were sentenced for their roles in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, on August 7, 1998. Those three and Wadih el Hage also were convicted of taking part in a conspiracy to kill Americans and destroy U.S. property worldwide.

This summer, the jury voted 9 to 3 in favor of executing al-'Owhali and Khamis Mohamed, according to the two jurors.

But federal law requires a jury to be unanimous in imposing a death sentence. By failing to reach a unanimous conclusion in the penalty phase, the jury had no other choice: al-'Owhali and K.K. Mohamed would receive life in prison without parole, the sentence pronounced Thursday by Judge Leonard Sand.

Co-defendants el Hage and Odeh also received life sentences. They had not faced the death penalty.

"To me it would be worse than death," said Juror 2. "I'd rather be dead than spend the rest of my life thinking about something."

Some jurors expressed the view on their verdict form that life behind bars is a harsher punishment than death by lethal injection. The jurors who talked to reporters described the debate over the death penalty as their most difficult hours, a struggle between vengeance and justice for the 213 people killed in Kenya and the 11 killed in Tanzania.

"In this instance it was an appropriate penalty," said Juror 2. "When you look at the deaths they caused, there is no other horror that could be worse."

The two jurors are two of the dozen New Yorkers who spent seven months this year as the elite audience in a courtroom seminar about bombings, terrorism, Osama bin Laden, and Islamic fundamentalism. As a result of determining the outcome of the embassy bombings trial, these panelists are among the most knowledgeable lay persons about bin Laden and how his network, al Qaeda, operates.

Due to pretrial publicity and the burden of serving on this case, a prospective jury pool of 1,300 people was screened, each answering a 96-page questionnaire, before being subjected to questioning in court. The panel remained anonymous throughout the trial, although limited biographical information was obtained from their jury questionnaires.

Juror 2 is a white 53-year-old Manhattan resident and registered nurse. Juror 7 is a black 43-year-old accountant from Haiti, a naturalized American, who lives in Westchester.

During the first four months in court, the jurors heard testimony from nearly 100 prosecution witnesses and saw 1,200 exhibits. It took them 12 days of deliberations to deliver their initial verdict by May 29 -- that all four men were guilty on all 302 counts under which they were charged.

"We walked back in the jury room and said, 'Where do we start?'" Juror 7 said. "We were very thorough, we were painstaking in the jury room. We took it very seriously."

"We did our job," said Juror 2.

Only a few months later, only a few blocks from the courthouse, the jurors and a nation saw the World Trade Center hit by hijacked passenger jets turned into missiles, and the twin towers came tumbling down.

"My thoughts went straight to al Qaeda," said Juror 2. "They said if they could do it again, they would."

"And they did," said Juror 7. "I was frightened, I was angry."

Now they have reservations about the government's new war on terrorism. Juror 2 sported a shiny American flag pin on her blazer lapel.

"It's so spread out, I don't know if targeting bin Laden is the only answer. I don't know if we can ever end terrorism," Juror 7 said.

Looking back on the trial evidence, the jurors said they gave careful consideration to the self-incriminating statements three defendants made to FBI interrogators after their arrests in Africa. Lawyers for al-'Owhali, Odeh and K.K. Mohamed fought unsuccessfully to have those statements suppressed.

For Odeh, they said his statement was particularly damaging.

"When I read the 'jihad manual' and there are instructions about how to behave when interrogated: 'Name other names and deflect attention from yourself,' Odeh was a textbook case," said Juror 2.

Listening to Odeh's defiant statement in court on Thursday, Juror 2 said of the defendants, "They can't see it's possible to be right and wrong simultaneously. Everything with them is black and white, right and wrong. They don't seem to be able to see the gray. There are ways to affect change that doesn't include violence."

After Odeh, the evidence against el Hage received the most scrutiny, the jurors said. In the end, his perjury during two grand jury appearances became proof of his involvement in the terror conspiracy.

"He obviously lied about his contact with bin Laden even after he left" Africa in 1997, said Juror 7. And even though he was living back in the United States for a year before the bombings, el Hage had worked for bin Laden since the early 1990s, engaged in legitimate and illegitimate business activities.

"With el Hage there was such a paper trail," said Juror 2.

Conspiracy law, the judge told them, meant you could "participate in a conspiracy without being at the end point," said Juror 2. They recognized that el Hage had trafficked in false passports and illegal documents and that "upper-level operatives were coming to his house," she said. His visitors in Kenya included al Qaeda military commander Mohamed Atef and the reputed ground leader of the Kenya bombing, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed.

"He was with the people who played a pivotal part in the bombing," Juror 2 said.

El Hage delivered an unrepentant statement in court Thursday, saying he had no reason to apologize.

"I'm sure he doesn't like being confined, but tough," said Juror 2. "I would consider the families of all the defendants victimized."

"In his statement he showed no remorse, which leads me to believe he would do it again. And it offends me as an American citizen," said Juror 7.

The jurors said their predominant emotion after the trial was relief, relief from the responsibility and the isolation of not being able to discuss the case -- their day job for six months -- with each other or anyone at home. They said it was their civic duty.

"I am comfortable with the decisions that I made," said Juror 2. "The jury system is how the ordinary citizen supports democracy. For our system to work, our people need to give up a little bit."