Sniper trial: Teenager's lawyers plan insanity defence

Lawyers for Washington sniper suspect Lee Malvo are to mount an insanity defence at his murder trial, arguing that the teenager was a victim of “indoctrination” by his older co-defendant John Muhammad.

“This case is so bizarre in its facts, and the degree of indoctrination is so severe, that we would be remiss if we failed” to put the sanity issue before a jury, said Craig Cooley, a lawyer for 18-year-old Malvo.

Malvo is set to go on trial on November 10 for the murder of FBI analyst Linda Franklin outside a Home Depot store. She was among 13 people who were shot, 10 fatally, during a three-week spree in the Washington DC area last autumn.

Muhammad goes on trial on Tuesday over the killing of a man who was pumping petrol at a service station near Manassas.

Both trials were moved 200 miles to south-eastern Virginia.

Muhammad’s lawyers have argued that Malvo was the triggerman, while Malvo’s defence team has contended that the teenager was acting under the influence of the older man.

Both defendants could be sentenced to death if convicted.

Along with the 13 shootings in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC the two are suspected of or charged with shootings in Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Arizona and Washington state.

The prosecutor in Malvo’s case, Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Horan, said he had reviewed the reports of a court-appointed mental-health expert and that there was nothing to suggest mental illness on Jamaican-born Malvo’s part.

“It says absolutely nothing about insanity,” Horan said. ”Apparently it’s a late-blooming insanity.”

But Cooley said the insanity defence was not based on the work of the court-appointed expert, but on experts who were retained privately and examined Malvo.

Cooley said that indoctrination was a form of mental illness and that it would ultimately be up to a jury to decide if it amounted to insanity.

Meanwhile, in Manassas, Virginia, the judge in the Muhammad case has ruled that 42-year-old Muhammad cannot present any mental-health evidence at his own trial because he refused to submit to an examination sought by prosecutors.

In previous motions and hearings, Malvo’s lawyers have argued their client had been brainwashed was “under the spell” of Muhammad, but yesterday’s pre-trial hearing was the first reference to an insanity defence.

For the defence to work, Malvo’s lawyers will have to show jurors that it was more likely than not that Malvo could not tell right from wrong at the time of the shootings.

If found innocent by reason of insanity, Malvo would be committed to a mental hospital until he is found to no longer be a threat. But he also faces several other charges in Virginia and other states.

Virginia law requires that Malvo now submit to another mental-health examination, this time by an expert selected by prosecutors, if he wants to present the insanity defence to jurors.