Teenage sniper suspect faces death penalty
A judge has said 17-year-old sniper suspect John Lee Malvo can be tried as an adult, making him eligible for the death penalty.
Juvenile Court Judge Charles Maxfield ruled in Fairfax, Virginia, after a hearing in which prosecutors said Malvo tauntingly tried to extort $10m (€9.4m) from authorities during the killing spree and that fingerprints on the murder weapon and other evidence tied the teenager to four attacks - three of them fatal.
“There is no eyewitness at any of the four crime scenes but the circumstantial evidence is quite strong,” the judge said.
Malvo and John Allen Muhammad, 42, are accused of killing 13 people and wounding five others in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC, last year. They are being tried in Virginia first, in separate trials.
The extortion allegation is a key element of a Virginia anti-terrorism law that allows the death penalty for killers convicted of trying to intimidate the public or coerce the government. Malvo is also charged under a statute that allows a death sentence for multiple murders.
“They wanted to negotiate for money,” prosecutor Robert Horan said. “They said, ‘If you want us to stop killing people give us the money.’ If that is not intent to intimidate government, I don’t know what is.”
Defence lawyers argued the evidence was insufficient because no eyewitnesses placed Malvo at any of the crime scenes. They also said the demand for money did not qualify as terrorism and questioned whether it should be interpreted as a motive for any alleged crime.
“This is not intimidation if you look at it. If you look at it in the broadest sense, it’s blackmail,” defence lawyer Michael Arif said.
After the hearing, he added: “The request for $10m sounds like something out of an Austin Powers movie.”
Malvo, a Jamaican citizen, is charged in Fairfax County with the killing on October 14 of FBI analyst Linda Franklin outside a Home Depot store in Falls Church. But Horan said ballistics evidence, the notes and the phone calls linked Malvo to two other fatal attacks and a shooting outside an Ashland restaurant that left a customer critically wounded.
A fingerprint expert also said the only identifiable prints found on the murder weapon, a Bushmaster rifle, belonged to Malvo. The print was found on the rifle’s pistol grip.
Earlier, a detective who interviewed Malvo for six hours after his arrest identified his voice on tape recordings of two threatening phone calls to authorities during the attacks. Both tapes were played in court.
“I talked to him long enough to know he’s very smooth and well-spoken. I’d know that voice immediately,” Fairfax County police detective June Boyle testified. She described Malvo as calm, relaxed and even “jovial on occasion” during their interview last year.
Defence lawyers challenged whether the caller was even male. Boyle conceded she had no special training in voice identification but the judge ruled her testimony was admissible.
One of the calls, made on October 21, was monitored by FBI agent Jackie Dalrymple. She said someone claiming to be a sniper laid out non-negotiable terms for ending the killing spree.
The caller ordered police to hold a news conference and say they believed they had caught the sniper “like a duck in a noose”. Otherwise, the caller told police, “be sure to know that we will not deviate” from previous threats to kill more people.
Muhammad faces trial in October in neighbouring Prince William County for the October 9 killing of Dean Meyers at a Manassas petrol station.
