Death for 9/11 suspects not assured

NEW YORK, Nov. 30 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama was overly confident when he predicted that a Sept. 11, 2001, suspect would draw a death sentence in a civilian trial, experts say.

Obama, in backing a U.S. Justice Department decision to try admitted Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other terror suspects in a New York federal court, predicted the critics of the move would be silenced "when the death penalty is applied to" Mohammed. But he may have spoken too soon, legal experts told Monday's Los Angeles Times.

They cite the Virginia trial of "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui, who shouted, "America, you lost and I won" when he was sentenced in 2006 not to death but to life in prison because of a lone holdout juror, the newspaper said.

"It will be an uphill battle to get a death penalty in these cases," Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor in New York, told the Times. "Obviously, the 9/11 crimes are as serious as you can get. But it is difficult to get 12 people in Manhattan to agree on a death penalty."

But defenders of the trial say the courts have shown themselves perfectly capable of trying and convicting terrorists, the Times reported.