Zacarias Moussaoui is back.
After pleading guilty and then un-pleading; after representing himself (like a madman) and then not representing himself; after three years without a trial and years of appellate court wrangling that culminated in the Supreme Court's refusal last month to intervene in the case and grant him meaningful access to potentially exculpatory witnesses, Moussaoui has evidently written a letter to his trial judge, Leonie Brinkema, agreeing to plead guilty and accept the death penalty.
Brinkema says she will meet with him in person this week, to determine whether he is mentally competent to enter such a plea, and then set a date for a death-penalty trial�under a bifurcated system one doesn't simply plead guilty and then hop in the chair.