Geraldine Davie has already seen one 9/11 co-conspirator tried in the United States, and that was enough for her. "I went to the Moussaoui trial every day," says Davie, of the years-long prosecution of the "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. "That was a travesty."

Davie, a petite brunette, is quick to proclaim her Italian, New York heritage, but her accent says it for her. Her daughter Amy O'Doherty--Irish-Italian, she specifies, as she pulls out a photo of a grinning, lightly freckled young woman--had graduated from college and gone to work at Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center 16 months before 9/11.

"I had just moved her into Manhattan, into Soho .  .  . weeks before," Davie says. "She had one foot in young adulthood and one in maturity." Davie shifts from tenderness when talking about her daughter, to toughness, when it comes to her murderers.

"This fellow [Moussaoui], you know what he would do? He would wait until the judge left the courtroom, and the jury left, and then he would spew this terrible anger," she says. "Hateful, hateful stuff. .  .  . We're gonna have that in New York? For years?" The trial, which ended with Moussaoui's guilty plea, was notorious for its theatrics. Moussaoui represented himself and was noted for such legal arguments as, "God Bless Mohammed Atta" and "America, you lost. .  .  . I won."

Sitting three rows behind Attorney General Eric Holder Wednesday in a cavernous Capitol Hill hearing room, Davie had come to let him know she doesn't want to face such a spectacle again.

She joined 12 other 9/11 family members at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Obama administration's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and four other 9/11 planners not as enemy combatants and war criminals before a military commission, but as civilians in federal court in New York City. They brought with them more than 100,000 signatures gathered by three 9/11 and national security websites--TheBravest.com, 911Familesfor-America.org, and Keep-AmericaSafe.com (on whose board this magazine's editor serves).

Holder spoke of the trials as a correction of Bush-era delays and an overdue attempt to seek justice for the victims of 9/11, but many present disagreed with his definition of justice. "To give these animals due process and to afford them constitutional rights is obscene," said John Owens, whose brother died in the towers on 9/11. (Peter Owens would have turned 50 next week.) "It angers me to no end that this guy is gonna get a platform, paid for by us, in the shadow of Ground Zero where my brother died."

Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who chaired the hearing, touted the backing of Peaceful Tomorrows, a pacifist group of 9/11 families, in favor of the Holder plan, but the showing of support in the gallery was sparse. The antiwar protesters of Code Pink only mustered two uncharacteristically quiet women. The Jersey Girls, a politically active group of 9/11 widows, released a statement supporting the decision two days after the hearing.

At times, emotions bubbled over, causing Leahy to call the crowd to order once. Holder's assertion that "failure is not an option" in these prosecutions raised senatorial eyebrows and snickers from the crowd. "Well, that's an interesting point of view," said Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.). Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) added, "I don't know how you can say failure is not an option. I'm a farmer, not a lawyer, but it seemed to me ludicrous."

Jon Kyl, the Arizona Republican, raised cheers from the gallery with his sharp questioning of Holder, who contended that his decision to bring 9/11 terrorists to civilian courts was based, not on politics, but on where he'd have the best shot at conviction.

"How could you be more likely to get a conviction in federal court when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has already asked to plead guilty to a military commission and be executed," he asked. "How can you be more likely to get a conviction in a [civilian] court than that?"