Malvo Case Goes to the Jury

A jury on Tuesday began deliberating the fate of Lee Boyd Malvo, the self-confessed triggerman in a series of random shootings last year that killed 10 people and terrorized the Washington, D.C., area.

Over the course of a 22-day trial, the prosecution and the defense introduced jurors to two different Malvos: one a calculating, cold-blooded assassin who bragged about making fatal “head shots”; the other an intelligent, inquisitive teenager victimized by a hard life and brainwashed into becoming a “child-soldier” by a hateful, domineering co-conspirator 24 years his senior, John Allen Muhammad.

Malvo, 18, pleaded not guilty, with his court-appointed attorneys arguing that he was insane during the October 2002 sniper attacks because he was “under the spell” of Muhammad. To accept an insanity defense, jurors must believe that Malvo could not distinguish between right and wrong and that he did not understand the consequences of his actions. In Virginia, the burden of proof in an insanity plea falls on the defense.

“Insanity is a tough sell, absolutely,” said Steven D. Benjamin, a Richmond lawyer and president-elect of the Virginia Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “Jurors don’t like excuses. The mood in this country has for a long time been not to blame someone else or some other set of circumstances for a crime.”

If the jury of seven women and five men finds Malvo insane, he will be sent to a mental institution until a judge rules he has regained his sanity. He could then be set free. If the jury rejects the plea, it could find him guilty of capital murder, an offense punishable by death even though Malvo was 17 and a juvenile at the time of the killings.

A different jury found Muhammad, 42, guilty of capital murder last month and recommended he be executed. A judge will sentence him in February.

Malvo is charged with one murder, that of Linda Franklin, 47, an FBI analyst, at a Home Depot parking lot in suburban Virginia. He was linked to that and other killings by his fingerprints on the sniper rifle, by DNA, by roadmaps with crosses at the murder sites, by witnesses who placed him near the crime scenes and by his own taped confessions to investigators, which were played for jurors. He later recanted and told mental health experts testifying for the defense that he confessed to being the triggerman in all 10 Washington-area killings to protect Muhammad, whom he considered a surrogate father.

The defense never denied that Malvo was part of a two-man sniper team, although it said that in most of the killings, Muhammad was the triggerman and Malvo the spotter. Under Virginia law, a defendant can be convicted of capital murder if he aided and abetted in a premeditated killing, even if he was not the gunman.

Throughout the trial, Malvo has usually appeared detached, whiling away the hours doodling on a pad. But on Tuesday, in a blue knit sweater and neatly pressed slacks, he hunched forward attentively, his right hand on his chin, as the prosecution and defense presented their closing arguments. Behind him, in two rows of benches marked reserved, sat a dozen family members of the slain victims.

The defense built its case largely around mitigating evidence -- that Malvo was the product of a broken home in Jamaica; that he was desperately in search of a father figure; that he was an obedient, church-going teenager until he met Muhammad, a 10-year veteran of the U.S. military, in late 2000 on the Caribbean island of Antigua and illegally entered the United States with him the next year.

“A hard life is not a mental disease,” prosecutor Robert Horan said Tuesday. The insanity plea and the mitigating evidence, he added, “were a smoke screen for the real crime -- that on Oct. 14, he sighted that rifle across the highway and shot Linda Franklin in the head.”

Franklin was the ninth person killed during the three-week sniper rampage in Washington and in suburban Virginia and Maryland. All the victims were strangers to Muhammad and Malvo, who prosecutors said spent hours scoping out ambush sites, pacing off distances to potential targets and planning escape routes. The snipers, carrying binoculars, walkie-talkies and a global-position device, lay in wait and usually killed the first person to enter their “killing zone” who presented an unobstructed target.

Malvo and Muhammad have been charged with or linked to slayings in Washington state, Arizona, Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia, in addition to the 10 in or near the nation’s capital.

Although the shootings in suburban Washington, D.C., took place at least 100 miles from here, Malvo and Muhammad’s trials were moved to the Norfolk area because their defense teams argued that the defendants could not receive fair trials in the communities traumatized by the sniper attacks.