Families of the nearly 3,000 victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks may be divided over whether the man accused of being the mastermind of the plot should someday face a death penalty trial or be allowed to plead guilty in exchange for life in prison.
But many agree on one thing: The on-again, off-again plea deal process has been agonizing.
“It’s a roller coaster that gets you nauseous,” said Julie Boryczewski, whose brother, Martin Boryczewski, a trader at the World Trade Center, was killed in the attacks. Ms. Boryczewski wants Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the main defendant, put to death. Otherwise, she said, terrorism wins.
Jessica Trant, whose father, Dan Trant, was killed on Sept. 11, said the uncertainty amounted to “mental warfare.”
“Why are we being victimized again?” said Ms. Trant, who also supports a death penalty trial.
Sept. 11 families who have been watching the yearslong case at Guantánamo Bay feel whipsawed. On July 31, a senior Pentagon official approved a deal by prosecutors that exchanged life in prison without the possibility of release or appeal. Then Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III rescinded the agreement to try to return the case to a capital trial, a process that would require years of litigation and appeals.
Today the case is in legal limbo. On Nov. 6 the presiding judge, Col. Matthew N. McCall, ruled that Mr. Austin acted too late and that the plea deal was still valid for Mr. Mohammed and two co-defendants. Prosecutors who reached the agreement are now preparing an appeal to a higher court.
“Please, it’s torture at this point,” said Cindy McGinty, whose husband, Michael, was killed at the Trade Center. “To me, personally, it’s cruel. In a perfect world I would like to see a trial with all the evidence and the court decides whether there will be life or death. That’s what I wanted 23 years ago. Now I would much rather see a plea deal and have them locked up and never think about them again.”
Some family members say they are tormented by what prosecutors have told them: that if Mr. Mohammed dies at Guantánamo Bay before all appeals are exhausted, under military justice he dies an innocent man.
Another emerging fear is that the Trump administration will suspend the Guantánamo proceedings to evaluate the system, as President Barack Obama did on his first day in office. The military judge is on the verge of deciding key pretrial questions on the impact of C.I.A. torture on the case.
Elizabeth Berry, a clinical psychologist whose brother, Billy Burke, a captain in the New York Fire Department, died in the attacks, described the sudden shifts in the case as renewing trauma for some, particularly those who have followed the pretrial hearings since 2008.
One woman she knew was “counting on their execution to make her feel whole again,” and felt betrayed by the plea deal that would resolve the case with life sentences that cannot be appealed.
Family members who fear that the defendants will die of natural causes before they are convicted or while the case is under appeal want a sense of finality in the case, Ms. Berry said.
A conviction “validates the reason they’ve been grieving all these years, their feelings of anger or sadness,” she said. “You’re taking away that validation when you’re taking away that stamp that says this person is guilty.”
Ms. Berry, who has worked as a grief counselor at Guantánamo Bay with family members, said her most important coping skill in life applied here: “Nothing stays the same, and everything changes. You don’t have much control over that. You can only control how you react to that.”
Deborah Garcia, whose husband, David, a computer programmer, was killed at the Trade Center, initially wanted Mr. Mohammed put to death. But now, she said, she would settle for a lifetime sentence in solitary confinement if that resolved the case without appeals.
“Lock them up and throw the key into the sea,” Ms. Garcia said. “I want finality before the new administration comes, changes things and probably drags out the fate.”
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