Political Leanings Versus Primal Fear

I have always considered myself a pretty liberal person, and one of the issues that makes me get crazy is the idea of the death penalty. My views on the death penalty were formed at a very young age while watching a documentary on Sacco and Vinzetti. These two men were falsely convicted of murdering a man (being immigrants for them was a two edged-sword, since it automatically put them under greater suspicion and their inability to properly express themselves in English also worked against them) and were put to death. Later on, it was found that they were not guilty – and that poses the question that I have yet to get a good answer for: Once you give someone the death penalty and then find out that they are innocent, how do you correct the situation? Given the imperfections in out legal system, how can we ever be 100% sure that the penalty is being applied justly? I have always stood firm on those beliefs.
So, can someone please tell me why I WANT Moussaoui to get the death penalty? I hardly recognized my own inner voice the other day at the gym when I saw the news broadcast discussing the penalty phase of his trial when she said loud and clear “Fry ‘Em!” Part of me felt justified in how I felt – after all this is no run of the mill criminal. This is an admitted member of Al-Qaeda, the group that would happily blow us all to smithereens if given half a chance. The other part of me argued that I do not know his background, and US/European actions in the Middle East have been enough to engender hard feelings if not outright hatred. That caused the “Fry ‘em!” part to respond “There are over 2,000 people dead from 9/11. Who cares about him?”
That, I guess is what it all comes down to. Moussaoui, for all intents and purposes, is unapologetic or shamed over what he helped to do – kill American Civilians. I live in an area of Brooklyn where there are a lot of police and firefighters. Couple that with the fact that there were many deaths in the neighborhood of regular civilians, and I saw over and over again the grief that this caused. Children are now growing up without one or both parent. The aftermath and toll of this action is still ongoing and still devastating.
It’s the children that bothers me the most, especially since there is evidence that Al-Qaeda was attempting to get the blueprints of New York City Schools. This is a group that Moussaoui allied himself with, a group that has publicly said they do not value the lives of American children and have made efforts to target them as their next victims. I know the argument, that it would be in retaliation for the children killed in Arab countries due to collateral damage. However, when I watch my son go off to school in the morning I could give a rat’s ass about that argument. I want my son safe, and if one way to do that is to kill Moussaoui then I am all for it.
However, would killing Moussaoui accomplish that goal? Who knows? It will either inflame the situation or give the terrorists pause for thought. However, one other motivation for killing Moussaoui is as old as the hills, or at least Shakespeare. The proverbial pound of flesh. Since legal channels have been unable to weed out Osama Bin Laden, this is a perpetrator that the victims families can have and watch suffer. An outlet for the need for vengeance that the families feel and need. Are they right? Who am I to say? Also, if Moussaoui wants Americans dead then why should I care if he lives?
There are no easy answers to any of this, especially for those of us who sympathize with the families and yet do have a problem with the death penalty. Bottomline, it is an answer I do not have, and so I am allowing myself to be driven by instinct and hoping that I will not be called on to do so too often, since how long will it take of instinct driven beliefs before I become an animal, which is what Moussaoui is?