ALEXANDRIA, Va. — After being warned by the judge about going overboard, prosecutors seeking to execute Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui summoned more heart-wrenching testimony Monday from victims' relatives, including a grandfather who watched a plane carry his son and granddaughter into the World Trade Center.
Another man testified about helping a burn victim in the lobby of a hotel and feeling the impact of a hijacked jet hitting the second tower without knowing that his sister and her 4-year-old daughter were aboard. A woman testified about the pain of losing a husband during "a not-so-great period" in their marriage without a chance "to tell him how much I loved him."
Prosecutors also played tapes of 911 calls made by two victims from the burning upper floors of the South Tower.
Responding to defense complaints, Judge Leonie Brinkema issued a stern warning before the jury was brought in. Conceding "there's no way of avoiding some degree of emotion in a case like this," Brinkema nevertheless said, "The government is approaching shaky ground."
She noted the prejudicial impact can be so overwhelming that a death sentence could be overturned on appeal. "You may pay a price for that down the road," she said.
She accepted a promise from prosecutors to use fewer family photographs and try to keep witnesses under 30 minutes each.
Questioning of eight morning witnesses appeared unchanged from the seven questioned last week. At one point, defense attorney Alan Yamamoto said the defense was about to renew its objections. Brinkema responded, "I understand that."
Only after a lunch break, when prosecutors had time to revise their presentations, was the questioning of some witnesses noticeably shorter.
In late afternoon, Brinkema said she had decided against releasing to the general public the cockpit recording of United Airlines Flight 93.
Later this week, the jury will hear the first public playing of the tape from the jet that passengers tried to retake from the hijackers. But because some Flight 93 family members objected to public airing of the tape, Brinkema decided that only the transcript, not the actual tape, would be released to the general public with other trial evidence.
On Monday, nearly every witness cried and needed water or a moment to regain composure. Some wept uncontrollably for brief periods.
Most of the 17 jurors and alternates maintained solemn faces that betrayed no emotion. But four women and one man dabbed discreetly at their eyes or noses with tissues or handkerchiefs.
Moussaoui, who is facing a life-or-death decision from this jury, watched and listened to the early witnesses intently, then shifted in his chair to stare straight ahead with a sober look on his face. At a morning break after the judge and jury had left, he said loudly, "Burn, in the USA." At the lunch break, he said more cryptically, "Hollywood, deadly circus."
In the afternoon when Mary Ellen Salamone, who lost her husband, John, a stock broker, described adopting a son, Alex, from an understaffed Lithuanian orphanage, Moussaoui turned back and did not take his eyes off her.
Moussaoui, who spent part of his first five years in French orphanages, remained transfixed as she discussed the inadequate medical treatment Alex got for pneumonia and his infant neglect syndrome, common among orphans. "He picked his skin and bashed his head just to get sensory stimulation because no one held him," Salamone testified.
Perhaps the day's most dramatic testimony came from 73-year-old C. Lee Hanson, whose granddaughter, Christine, at 2 1/2, was the youngest victim of 9/11.
Hanson said his son, Peter, called him by cell phone from United Airlines Flight 175 to tell him they had been hijacked. Peter said he thought the hijackers were going to crash the plane into a building. "Don't worry Dad, if it happens, it will be quick," Peter added.
"As we were talking," Hanson told jurors, "he said, very softly, 'Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!' And there was a scream in the background."
Crying, Hanson added, "I looked at the television and saw the plane fly into the building."
Days later, the grandfather traveled to their Massachusetts home to retrieve DNA samples to help medical examiners identifying remains. Hanson said it was "probably one of the worst things I ever did in my life. I was picking hair out of hair brushes, putting toothbrushes into bags."
All that was ever found was a bone of his son, a few inches long.
Ray Clifford, 51, born in Ireland but living in the United States since 1980, arrived early Sept. 11, 2001, for a meeting at the Marriott next to the trade center. After the first jet impact, he met a woman in the lobby with her clothes burnt off, got water for her, a tablecloth to wrap her.
He was saying the Lord's Prayer with her when they felt the shaking from another jet hitting the second tower. He said he did not then know that his only sister, Ruth Clifford McCord, and her 4-year-old daughter, Juliana, were aboard that plane.
Jurors heard a 911 tape from a trapped victim, Melissa Doi, on the 83rd floor of the South Tower, who told the dispatcher "I'm going to die, aren't I? Please God, it's so hot, I'm burning up."
Later, they heard a 911 recording from Kevin Cosgrove on the 99th floor of the South Tower. Through muffled shouts, he could be heard saying "I can't breathe. I can't see. ... I'm not ready to die." The call ended with his scream: "Oh God, no!"
Moussaoui pleaded guilty last year to conspiring with al-Qaida to fly planes into U.S. buildings. A week ago, the jurors ruled him eligible for the death penalty even though he was in jail in Minnesota on 9/11. They decided that lies he told federal agents a month before the attacks led directly to at least one death that day by keeping agents from identifying and stopping some of the hijackers. Now they must decide whether he deserves execution or life in prison.