Prosecution Rests in Sniper Trial

Prosecutors in the serial sniper trial here rested their case Monday, describing defendant John Allen Muhammad as the killing spree’s “director,” while his alleged teenage accomplice pleaded not guilty at the start of his own trial in a courtroom 20 miles away.

The proceedings highlighted the clashing strategies being used by the two sniper suspects as they try to counter the state’s trove of circumstantial evidence and ward off possible death sentences.

While Muhammad’s lawyers argued there was no evidence that he “directed or ordered” Lee Boyd Malvo to fire the high-powered rifle used in many of last year’s Washington-area killings, the teen’s insanity plea was the opening salvo in an effort to prove the older man had “brainwashed” him into participating in the murder spree.

Malvo’s “intention is to plead not guilty by reason of insanity,” defense lawyer Craig S. Cooley said moments after the 18-year-old muttered “not guilty” in response to questions from Fairfax County Circuit Judge Jane Marum Roush. Clad in a blue-and-white striped sweater, Malvo seemed stolid but tense, his clenched fist pressed down against the defense table.

Last month, Malvo’s attorneys declared their intent to defend the teenager by claiming that he was temporarily insane during the sniper rampage. Malvo has confessed to firing the shots in several of the murders, but his defense team pointed to witnesses in Muhammad’s trial who have said that the 42-year-old Persian Gulf War veteran dominated the youth and subjected him to intense workouts and arms training.

The brief arraignment in a Chesapeake, Va., courtroom opened Malvo’s trial in the killing of FBI analyst Linda Franklin, who was gunned down Oct. 14, 2002, in a Home Depot parking lot in Seven Corners, Va. As lawyers in that case began jury selection, Muhammad’s lawyers asked Prince William County Circuit Judge LeRoy F. Millette Jr. on Monday to dismiss two murder counts against their client in the Oct. 9, 2002, slaying of Maryland civil engineer Donald Meyers.

They argued it had not been proved that Muhammad was the triggerman in the one count that accuses him of multiple murders and that prosecutors had failed to prove that a second count of murder was committed as a “terrorist act.” In his confession to Fairfax County police, Malvo admitted to firing the shots that killed both Franklin and Meyers.

Millette said he would not rule on the defense motions until Wednesday.

But the gathering momentum in the government’s case came out in the blunt comments of Montgomery County Police homicide Sgt. Roger Thomson, the last of nearly 100 prosecution witnesses to take the stand after three weeks of testimony and 405 evidence exhibits.

As he finished with Thomson, Prince William County Commonwealth Atty. Paul F. Ebert left jurors with a reminder of the wave of relief among Washington-area residents that followed the arrests of Muhammad and Malvo a year ago.

“From that day to this, has there ever been another sniper shooting?” Ebert asked. The gray-haired detective paused only a moment: “No,” he said. “Nothing like this.”

Thomson, the ranking supervisor on duty the chaotic October morning that four Montgomery County residents were shot down by sniper fire, testified that even police feared for their lives that day. The officer said he ordered his investigators to wear bulletproof vests to shield them from the invisible killers, then called his mother to warn her to stay off county streets.

Despite a long career investigating several hundred murders, Thomson said, he was both stumped and alarmed. “We’ve had some spree killings where an individual goes into a business and maybe shoots a couple people. But nothing like this -- total strangers, unconnected, no witnesses, no reason.”

Thomson was one of several witnesses called by prosecutors to underscore the rampant public fear at the time and to bolster the terrorism murder count against Muhammad.

Several school security officials have testified that Maryland and Virginia students and parents were left traumatized by the killings. Edward A. Clarke, director of security for schools in Montgomery County, said that the hundreds of public schools cordoned off during a three-week-long “Code Blue” alert and the anguished parents deluging county phone lines “left me with ... a sense of uncertainty.”

Prosecutors are using an untested Virginia law that permits a death sentence even if a defendant does not pull the trigger -- but only if there is proof that the killing either intimidated the public or tried to influence the government. Muhammad satisfies both conditions, prosecutor James Willett said Monday, because he panicked “the entire Eastern seaboard” and tried to force the government to pay a $10-million ransom to halt the killings.

“The single most important thing a sniper does is not killing, but terrorism of an entire population,” Willett said.

Ebert summed up the government’s vast circumstantial case by focusing on the sniper’s implements found in Muhammad’s Chevrolet Caprice -- a cache that included a Bushmaster .223-caliber assault rifle linked to eight murders, ammunition, a pair of walkie-talkies, an electronic Global Positioning System and a computer containing skull-and-crossbones icons marking the location of several of the killings.

“All of these things tied right in,” Ebert said. “It can’t be a coincidence.”

As he argued for dismissal of the murder counts, Muhammad defense lawyer Peter D. Greenspun said prosecutors had failed to provide clear proof that Muhammad fired any shots or compelled Malvo to target sniper victims.

Insisting Virginia’s antiterrorism law is aimed at ideological murders with an “Osama bin Laden aspect” and not at serial killings, a skeptical Greenspun said there was a “dearth of evidence” that “Lee Boyd Malvo was acting at the direction or order of Mr. Muhammad.”

The judge withheld an immediate decision, but told Muhammad’s defense lawyers to prepare their case, which is expected to last the rest of the week.