TOM HAYS, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — New York juries are often loath to impose the death penalty, even for terrorists.

In fact, a jury spared the lives of two Osama bin Laden followers a month after Sept. 11, 2001, while the World Trade Center's ruins were still smoldering.

Now comes a case unlike any other: the trial of the professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of murdering nearly 3,000 people in the United States' deadliest terrorist attack.

"If there was any case where a New York jury would impose the death penalty, this is it," said James Cohen, a law professor at Fordham University.

Nevertheless, a jury might steer clear of the death penalty — not out of any opposition to capital punishment, but out of fear of making a martyr out of Mohammed.

"We don't care about capital punishment," he said earlier this year at a Guantanamo Bay military hearing. "We are doing jihad for the cause of God.