DOCUMENT: Crime

Lawyers Claim Moussaoui Has "A Beautiful Mind"

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Lawyers Claim Moussaoui Has "A Beautiful Mind"

Lawyers for Zacarias Moussaoui yesterday compared the so-called 20th hijacker to John Nash, the brilliant but troubled Nobel Prize winner portrayed by Russell Crowe in the film "A Beautiful Mind." Moussaoui's recent "bizarre" behavior--he wants to fire his lawyers and has filed a variety of pro se motions--suggests "that he could be suffering something akin to the affliction of John Nash depicted by Russell Crowe" in the Oscar-winning movie. The attorneys added that because Nash "was such a genius, his illness was difficult to recognize by those around him. Mr. Moussaoui's high intellect has much the same effect here." What follows in an excerpt from a defense memorandum of law unsealed yesterday in Virgina federal court. (7 pages)

Click here for a recent Moussaoui outburst.

Dude, Where's My Corpse?