Overview

• The three-judge panel’s split decision overturned a deal that would have spared Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants from the death penalty.
• Military prosecutors and the Pentagon’s senior Guantanamo official spent two years negotiating life sentences without parole in exchange for guilty pleas.
• Former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin rescinded the agreement last year on the grounds that only his office could authorize removing the death penalty.
• The case will return to the Guantanamo Bay military commissions as disputes continue over evidence obtained under CIA interrogation methods.
• More than two decades of litigation and appellate rulings have left the prosecution unresolved and victims’ families without closure.