FROM Northern Virginia | June/July-2006
Middleburg
Edward MacMahon sums it up without regret: “It’s been a long four years. I just try to stay focused and not get exhausted by the whole process.”
As the Federally-appointed private attorney for Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in connection with the September 11 attacks, MacMahon serves a client who calls him “bloodsucker” and “Right Wing Racist.”
“Moussaoui is an incomparable defendant. He has nothing for scorn for everybody. My mother was worried for my safety when I took the case.” The federally-mandated pay of $160 an hour is hardly fodder for legal eagles commuting 91 miles a day round trip.
So why did MacMahon sign up for four years of this?
He’s not a public defender. (The court appointed Frank Dunham Jr. as the indigent, Moroccan+-born Frenchman’s main defense counsel.) Nor does Ed MacMahon come across as a bleeding heart. For 16 years after graduating from Tulane law school, the married father of two school-
age children had been content with a private practice in Middleburg where his family moved from Cheverly, Maryland several decades ago. In 2001 Ed MacMahon was a country lawyer with a soft spot for government investigations dating from his days as a law clerk in Virginia’s federal district court.
Not a likely choice to safeguard the civil rights of a self-confessed terrorist and enemy of the US.
Or was he?
Federal judge Claude Hilton watched MacMahon in an earlier terrorism case in Virginia’s eastern district. “Back in 2001,” MacMahon says modestly in a deep voice that could be mistaken for gruff, “I’d had some experience defending Ali Al-Tamini, the GMU scholar accused of waging war against the United States. I guess that was enough” to get MacMahon appointed in the Moussaoui case. “Today, there isn’t anybody else from Northern Virginia who’s counsel in one of these high profile cases.”
“We knew it was very serious,” says MacMahon. “But everybody involved thought it would be a typical Alexandria case, six to nine months.” (Observers call the venue one of the nation’s most efficient federal courthouses, proud to be nicknamed “the Rocket Docket.”)
Four years later, MacMahon’s sister Helen, an agent in the family real estate brokerage, admits to getting in line at the local coffee shop to catch up with her brother before his commute. By now the Rocket Docket had “slowed to a crawl by a defendant with no legal training serving largely as his own lawyer,” reported Court TV.
After being fired by his client, then forced to stay on the case by judge Leonie Brinkema, then retained again by Moussaoui who refused to enter an innocent plea, MacMahon faced a challenging defense. “Our team has shown that you can put together a defense that is respectful to the victims but also doesn’t permit the defendant’s constitutional rights to be trampled.
Because if the Federal government can walk all over this guy, it can do it to any one of us.”
“I told the jury this was a test case. Could we really give this guy a fair trial since he delights in mass murder?” The trial took place five miles from the Pentagon, one site of the September 11 attacks. “Could we find an impartial jury?”
When the case did go to trial in January 2002, “I tried to appeal to the jury to rise above”
Moussaoui’s frequent courtroom outbursts. “I have faith in the jury system. It’s as old as the Magna Carta. Whatever the verdict, it’s up to the jury as the representatives of all of us.”
MacMahon plays down any danger in defending a terrorist. “The America people understand that I’m doing. As I said in my closing argument, I said to the jury: ‘You see how he treats me. I would never ask you to do anything for this man. But I will ask you to go back there and find out the truth about what really happened on September 11, 2001. Because that’s your job. Don’t do it for him. Do it for us all.’”
Moussaoui was convicted, and on May 4th 2006 was sentenced to life in prison. MacMahon expects a vigorous appeal. But he doesn’t expect to spend the next four years of his life on a rollercoaster ride at the Rocket Docket.
“I’m the exact same person I was four years ago. I want to re-start my law practice, working on both criminal and civil cases. Only I don’t want to represent any more clients like Zacarais Moussaoui.”