U.S. & World

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (CBS) ― The stories and photos of three young girls, all of whom lost parents in the Sept. 11 attack at the World Trade Center, brought witnesses to tears and visibly affected jurors Thursday at the death penalty trial of al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.

Opening the second phase of the sentencing trial — in which jurors will decide whether Moussaoui deserves execution or life in prison — prosecutors played videos of the two hijacked jetliners hitting the gleaming towers. Prosecutors also showed videos of people plunging more than 80 stories to their deaths, punctuating their presentation with family photos of loved ones.

Each hour the emotional impact grew.

New York fireman Anthony Sanseviro testified he arrived on the scene to hear "whistling sounds," which were victims falling from the sky. One landed on Sanseviro's partner, killing him, CBS News correspondent Jim Stewart reports.

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani retold the now-familiar tale of his own harrowing experience in debris-choked lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001. But it was not until he spoke of the daughter of one of his closest aides, Beth Petrone Hatton, that Giuliani's voice quaked and broke. Firefighter Terence S. Hatton — who earned 19 medals in 21 years — died without knowing his wife was pregnant.

One female juror looked stricken. The rest hung motionless on Giuliani's every word.

Even Moussaoui, who had affected a look of boredom during the showing of video of falling bodies, watched the ex-mayor intently as he described Terry Hatton, who was born May 15, 2002. Her picture with Giuliani flashed on the screen.

"Terry's going to grow up without a father ... without a very special father," Giuliani said. "You can't replace that. ... There's no way that money, camps and scholarships, which is very important and which we raised, can replace that." Giuliani aides in the audience dabbed their eyes with tissue and sniffled. In the aftermath of the attacks, Giuliani said he attended more than 100 funerals, Stewart reports.

A photo of fallen firefighter Danny Suhr with his daughter, Briana, was shown. Sanseviro described how Suhr's wife and childhood sweetheart, Nancy, has struggled to bring her up without him.

He was followed to the stand by James Smith, a 21-year veteran of the New York Police Department with a 6-year-old daughter, Patricia. His wife, Moira, also a police officer, was bringing a woman with asthma down from the third floor of the South Tower when it collapsed on them.

"Moira was a gung-ho police officer, who took chances and made a lot of arrests, until Patricia was born," he said. "She went from street narcotics to community policing. She decided that she wanted to be a mother even more than a police officer."

Asked to describe the loss felt by his daughter, Smith replied in a quavering voice: "The loss to Pat ... I can't begin to describe ... all the things she'll never be able to do with her mother, the first day of school, the relationship with her mother ..."

He stopped for a drink of water.

Prosecutor David Raskin showed a photo of Patricia taken Dec. 4, 2001, and asked Smith to explain it.

It showed a girl, 2 1/2 years old, with long dark hair in a red dress that flowed to her ankles. She was wearing a long blue ribbon looped around her neck and attached to an object below her knees.

"That was Valor Day, when the New York Police Department hands out medals," Smith said. "She's wearing the medal they awarded Moira, the department's highest honor, the Medal of Honor."

The stricken-looking female juror pulled a tissue out and wiped her eyes. A male juror nearby appeared to be on the verge of tears. The burly, balding cop also wiped his eyes.

Prosecutor Rob Spencer braced jurors for the painful testimony they were going to hear over the next few weeks. The voices of the victims of the attacks and their anguished families should be all jurors need to hear to conclude that Moussaoui should die for his crimes, Spencer said.

Spencer described one call from a woman on the 83rd floor of the second tower to fall. "The floor is completely engulfed," she said. "We're on the floor and we can't breathe.... I don't see any more air. ... I'm going to die, aren't I?" The tape apparently will be played later.

Crying on the stand, Tamar Rosbrook described looking out her Lower Manhattan hotel room window and seeing objects falling down the side of a flaming World Trade Center tower, CBS Radio News correspondent Barry Bagnato reports.

"I started screaming, those are people," she said. They were jumping one at a time at first and then, more organized. "Sometimes they would jump in groups of two, sometimes in groups of three," said told jurors.

They seemed to be aiming for a canopy far below. A picture was shown to jurors: holes in the canopy and parts below it, Bagnato reports.

Family members winced at the graphic images flashing on courtroom screens until U.S. District Judge Leone Brinkema finally called a halt, Stewart reports.

"That'll be enough of that," she said.

Prosecutors also will play the cockpit recordings from United Flight 93, which crashed into a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, after passengers fought back against the hijackers. The tape has never been heard publicly.

"You cannot understand the magnitude of that day unless you hear it from the victims themselves," Spencer said. Moussaoui smiled several times when the prosecution mentioned his enthusiasm for the attacks.

Defense lawyer Gerald Zerkin said both Moussaoui's sisters are paranoid schizophrenics and his father is very troubled and may be schizophrenic as well. Noting the disease is inherited, Zerkin plans to call a doctor who believes Moussaoui suffers from a mentally illness that probably is schizophrenia.

Zerkin acknowledged that testimony about the impact on victims will be overwhelming. He urged jurors to "somehow maintain your equilibrium. ... You must nevertheless open yourselves to the possibility of a sentence other than death."

Zerkin described how Moussaoui grew up with little religious training and fell under the influence of radical Muslims when he traveled to London in hopes of becoming a businessman.

Spencer countered: "It was his choice to become a terrorist and it was a choice he was proud of."

Moussaoui, 37, is the only person charged in this country in the Sept. 11 attacks. On Monday, the jury concluded that Moussaoui was directly responsible for at least one death on that day and is therefore eligible for execution.

Moussaoui was in a Minnesota jail on Sept. 11. Nevertheless, the jury concluded that Moussaoui could have thwarted or minimized the attacks if he had confessed his al Qaeda membership and his plan to hijack aircraft when federal agents arrested him in August 2001 while he was taking flight training.

(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)