Sniper victim's father: Closure is impossible

A US jury recommended today that John Allen Muhammad should be executed for masterminding the deadly sniper attacks that terrorised the Washington area for three weeks last autumn.

Marion Lewis, 51, the father of sniper victim Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, 25, said his relief at the jury’s verdict was tempered.

“Now I have to wait 10 or 15 years for the execution to happen,” he said. He added: “I don’t believe there ever can be any total closure for something like this.”

As the verdict was read, Muhammad maintained the same unflinching demeanour he had shown through most of his trial.

The jury deliberated for five hours over two days before reaching the verdict against the 42-year-old former soldier who had asked police to “Call me God” during the October 2002 spree.

Jurors in Virginia Beach, Virginia, had convicted him of murder a week ago and then heard testimony in the sentencing phase.

The jury’s sentencing recommendation is not final. Circuit Judge LeRoy Millette can reduce the punishment to life in prison without parole when Muhammad is formally sentenced, but Virginia judges rarely do that.

Sentencing was set for February 12.

The jury concluded that prosecutors proved both aggravating factors allowing the death penalty: that Muhammad would pose a danger in the future or that his crimes were wantonly vile. He was sentenced to death on both counts he was convicted of: multiple murders within three years and murder as part of a terrorist plot.

“As we said from the get-go, the death penalty is reserved for the worst of the worse,” prosecutor Paul Ebert said. “We think Mr Muhammad fell into that category and we think the jury agreed.”

“One thing’s for sure they took pleasure in terrorising people,” he said. “They took pleasure in killing people and that’s the kind of man that doesn’t deserve to be in society.”

The jury also recommended the maximum sentences of 10 years in prison for conspiracy to murder and three years for using a firearm in a felony.

When Muhammad and his teenage co-defendant, Lee Boyd Malvo, were arrested several jurisdictions scrambled to prosecute them. Attorney General John Ashcroft decided to send them to Virginia to stand trial, citing the state’s ability to impose “the ultimate sanction.”

Only Texas has executed more people than Virginia since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 – 310 to 89. Virginia is one of 21 states that allow the execution of inmates who committed capital crimes as 16 and 17-year-olds. Malvo was 17 at the time of the shootings.

During the sentencing phase of the trial, defence lawyers sought to portray Muhammad as a caring family man, showing jurors a home movie in which he played with his children and encouraged them to take their first steps. Several witnesses also testified he had a loving relationship with his kids.

But prosecutor James Willett said as he urged jurors to give Muhammad a death sentence: “He doesn’t care about children, human life or anything else God put on this earth except himself.”

He said Muhammad may have been a good father once, but “that person was murdered by this individual just as viciously and just as completely as everybody else.”

The defence was barred from presenting any mental health evidence because Muhammad refused to be interviewed by the prosecutors’ psychiatrist.

The defence had previously suggested he may have suffered from Gulf War syndrome, and his ex-wife said that Muhammad’s behaviour was much different after he returned from Operation Desert Storm.

Prosecutors had depicted Muhammad as a ruthless murderer who was “captain of a killing team,” and they presented evidence of 16 shootings, including 10 deaths, in Maryland, Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana and the District of Columbia.

Muhammad was found guilty of killing Dean Harold Meyers, a 53-year-old Vietnam veteran who was cut down by a single bullet to the head as he filled his car at a petrol station station.

Malvo is on trial in nearby Chesapeake for killing FBI analyst Linda Franklin, 47, outside a DIY store.

Prosecutors offered no proof that showed Muhammad was the triggerman, but they presented a mountain of circumstantial evidence linking him to the crimes. His DNA was found on the .223-calibre rifle used in the killings, and prosecutors said a laptop computer found in his car included maps of six shooting scenes, each marked with skull-and-crossbones icons.

Meanwhile, in Chesapeake, a judge ruled today that jurors in Malvo’s trial will be allowed to hear the remainder of a recorded interview with police in which the teenager bragged about his marksmanship.

Jurors on Friday had heard four audiotapes of the interview, conducted by a murder squad detective, but defence lawyers objected to a fifth tape of the end of the interview, contending the sound quality was so poor that the transcript was inaccurate.

Circuit Judge Jane Marum Roush said she listened to the tape “many, many times” during the weekend and was satisfied that the transcript is accurate. She said prosecutors could play the tape and let the jury read the transcript.

In the interviews, Malvo admitted pulling the trigger in all the shootings, bragged about his shooting prowess and explained the sniper plan by weaving together the philosophical, logistical and nonsensical.

In the tapes played for Malvo’s jury, he at times sounded childlike and vulnerable, as when he asks police about the whereabouts of his “father,” Muhammad, and if he could have raisins.

At other times he sounded maniacal and savvy, as when he imitated a lawnmower noise while describing the deadly shooting of a landscaper, and later chided detectives for asking him a “leading question.”

“It has been a little bit of a relief today when we finally reached our decision and we knew we had made the right one,” said juror Heather Best-Teague.

The hardest part with imposing the death penalty for her was “the fact that he has children. I know what it would be like to not ever see mine again.”