The Supreme Court refused to restore plea deals that would have spared alleged Sept. 11 planners from the death penalty, clearing the path toward military trials at Guantanamo Bay.

The high court said Monday it will not review a 2024 Pentagon decision that revoked those agreements for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other men accused of planning the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attacks. Breitbart reported that the justices left standing an appeals court ruling that former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had the authority to cancel the deals.

That outcome keeps capital punishment available in cases that have dragged on for nearly two decades. It also pushes pre-trial work forward for three men held at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2006.

Military prosecutors had reached the plea deals earlier in 2024. A military commission judge signed off. The agreements would have removed the death penalty, locked in life sentences after guilty pleas to all charges, and set a public sentencing in front of survivors and family members.

Austin, serving in the Biden administration, revoked the deals days later. Lower military courts said he lacked the power to do it. In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit backed Austin. The Supreme Court’s refusal to take the case leaves that appeals ruling in place.

Victims’ families still wait while the clock runs past a generation

The three men are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, and Walid bin Attash. The United States has held Mohammed at Guantanamo since 2006. His co-conspirators remain there as well.

For the families of the nearly 3,000 people killed on Sept. 11, the plea deals would have closed the door on the ultimate penalty for the attacks’ alleged architects. Austin’s revocation reopened that door. The high court’s action Monday keeps it open.

Readers who follow the court’s docket have watched other high-stakes fights this term, including when the Supreme Court cleared Trump to resume third-country deportations of illegal immigrants.

Georgetown University Law Center professor Steve Vladeck, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the justices to hear the appeals, told CNN what the denials mean in practice.

"The practical effect of today’s denials of certiorari is to clear the way for the inexorable pre-trial proceedings in these cases to continue,"

Vladeck added a blunt assessment of the calendar.

"It would be one thing if a trial were reasonably likely in the near future, but even the current summer 2028 trial date is entirely unrealistic given how many issues remain to be resolved."

One major drag has been long-running fights over evidence tied to CIA interrogation methods after the attacks. Those disputes have helped push any military commission deep into the future.

No noted dissents as Kavanaugh steps aside

The New York Post reported there were no noted dissents from the court’s refusal. Justice Brett Kavanaugh recused himself. The Post also reported that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s military trial is set to begin June 5, 2028, at Guantanamo Bay.

In a 2007 U.S. military hearing, Mohammed was quoted saying, "I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z." That admission has long stood as a stark marker of the case’s gravity, even as legal skirmishes delayed a full reckoning.

The same court has drawn national attention in other recent matters, from the fight over campaign advertising rules to election mechanics. One recent example came when the Supreme Court again backed Trump in a campaign ad rates fight.

What the Monday order does not do is speed the case to a finish line. Pre-trial litigation continues. Evidence fights remain. A summer 2028 date already looks fragile to outside legal analysts. Yet the path now runs through a military commission that can still seek the death penalty, not through a bargained life sentence sealed in 2024.

Austin’s revocation survives after public backlash

The 2024 plea agreements landed amid sharp public anger. Survivors and relatives of the dead saw a deal that traded away capital punishment for men accused of engineering the worst terrorist attack on American soil. Austin moved quickly to pull the agreements back.

Military courts first said the defense secretary lacked authority. The D.C. Circuit disagreed in August and upheld his power to cancel the deals. By declining review, the Supreme Court left that holding undisturbed. The practical result is simple: the deals stay dead, and the capital case stays alive.

Court watchers have also tracked Second Amendment and redistricting fights in recent months. The Supreme Court left intact a Fifth Circuit ruling that simple drug possession cannot erase gun rights, another signal of how closely conservatives watch the justices’ shadow docket and full opinions alike.

None of those other cases change the core facts here. Three men accused of planning Sept. 11 nearly locked in life terms without facing a death-qualified military commission. A Biden Pentagon chief revoked the bargains. An appeals court said he could. The Supreme Court will not disturb that result.

Twenty-three years on, accountability still moves in fits

Sept. 11, 2001, remains the baseline. The men have sat at Guantanamo since 2006. Prosecutors tried to resolve the cases with pleas in 2024. Austin killed those pleas within days. Litigation then ate more than a year. Now the high court has closed one exit ramp.

That sequence matters for anyone who believes mass-casualty terrorism should face the full range of lawful punishment. Life without parole is severe. It is not the same as a capital case tried before a military commission with survivors in the room for sentencing. The revoked deals would have taken that option off the table permanently.

Election-rule disputes have also kept the court in the headlines. In one recent matter the Supreme Court rejected a Trump push to restrict mail ballots ahead of the midterms, a reminder that the justices remain central to fights far beyond terrorism prosecutions.

Here, the institutional question was narrower: Did the defense secretary have the power to scrap plea deals his own prosecutors had just cut? The D.C. Circuit said yes. The Supreme Court left that answer alone. Pre-trial proceedings grind on. A 2028 trial date sits on the calendar, realistic or not.

The families have already waited through two decades of detention, discovery fights, and interrogation controversies. They will wait longer still. What they will not face, after Monday, is a Supreme Court-ordered return to deals that erased the death penalty before a single military juror ever heard the evidence.

Justice for Sept. 11 has been slow, messy, and incomplete. Keeping capital punishment available for the alleged masterminds is the least the system can still do.