By Timothy Dwyer, The Washington Post
CHESAPEAKE, Va., -- Lee Boyd Malvo was sentenced to life in prison without parole Tuesday afternoon by the jury that had convicted him last week of capital murder and terrorism charges in the sniper shootings that terrorized the Washington area in October of 2002.
Both counts had carried the possibility of the death penalty.
Malvo had been found guilty in the murder of Linda Franklin, 47, who was slain with a single shot to the head on Oct. 14, 2002, while loading packages into her car outside the Home Depot store in Seven Corners. She was one of 10 people killed during the month-long sniper siege in the Washington area.
The jury’s decision was the end of a long judicial process that began last year when Attorney General John Ashcroft decided that Malvo and John Allen Muhammad, who was convicted and sentenced to death last month for his role in the sniper shootings, would be tried in Virginia.
Malvo and Muhammad could have been tried for murder in Maryland, the District, Alabama, Louisiana. But Ashcroft selected Virginia because of the state’s record of successful death penalty convictions and because Malvo could be given a death sentence there although he was a juvenile at the time of the slayings.
Monday marked the beginning of the seventh week of the trial. The jury of eight women and four men have heard testimony from about 150 witnesses in the case, including the last three Monday morning, who were called by the defense to help them make their case that Malvo’s life should be spared.
Throughout the trial the prosecution portrayed Malvo and Muhammad as a cold-blooded team of killers who set out on a mission to terrorize the Washington region with carefully planned sniper attacks. Malvo and Muhammad’s intent, the prosecution said, was to intimidate the government into paying them $10 million in exchange for a halt to the killings.
In finding Malvo guilty, the jury rejected the defense contention that the teenager was indoctrinated, or brainwashed, by Muhammad, a 42-year-old military veteran, to the point where he could no longer tell right from wrong and was, therefore, insane.
The defense argued that because of Malvo’s difficult childhood, he was devoted to Muhammad. Malvo’s parents separated when he was young and he grew up without a father figure. His mother moved him frequently, and often left him to live with friends, relatives and strangers. Described as an obedient and intelligent boy, Malvo was bullied at school by older and bigger boys, witnesses testified.
But as a teenager, he latched onto Muhammad and his family and found a stability that had been lacking in his life, the defense argued. Yet Muhammad strictly controlled Malvo’s life, keeping him isolated from other people and brainwashing him into helping him in the killing spree, according to the defense presented in court. Shortly before the shooting began in Washington, Malvo wrote a letter to LaToria Williams, the niece of Muhammad’s first wife, telling her that he was a “walking time bomb waiting to explode.”
The trial was moved from Fairfax County to Chesapeake by Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Jane Marum Roush because of concerns that potential jurors in Northern Virginia were too personally affected by the shootings to be impartial.
The trial was the longest that Horan, who has been a prosecutor for 37 years, has ever been involved with. The beginning of the trial was most unusual, too, because much of the evidence against Malvo, including the Bushmaster rifle used in the shootings, was unavailable to Horan since it was in Virginia Beach for the capital murder trial of Muhammad.
The centerpiece of the case against Malvo was the teenager’s own words.
In the guilt phase and the penalty phase, portions of the tape recorded interview conducted after his arrest by investigators was played over and over again for the jury. In an arrogant tone, Malvo described the murder of Franklin and other shootings. He showed no remorse. On one tape played for the jury, he imitated the sound of a lawn mower when he talked about the killing of James L. “Sonny” Buchanan, the first of five people to die in the Washington region on Oct. 3, 2002.
Buchanan, 39, was a landscaper who was pushing a lawn mower near a car dealership in Rockville. Malvo could be heard laughing on the tape when he described how the lawn mower kept moving after Buchanan had been felled by a single shot to the body.
Horan stressed to the jury the randomness of the shootings. He told the jury that the victims were ordinary people who were going about their ordinary lives when they were killed without any warning.
Part of Horan’s strategy was to bring the victims alive for the jury. Using computer screens set up for the jury, witnesses and the attorneys -- and a large screen set up in front of the jury -- Horan used photographs of the victims to portray them in life, smiling and happy. Then he showed the jury horrific photographs of them in death, lying where they were shot or on a medical examiner’s slab with their gaping wounds exposed.
Horan recalled, with near fury in his voice, Oct. 3, 2002, when four people in Maryland and one in the District were shot and killed by sniper shots.
Horan also tried to show the jury the affect of the shooting in the most emotional testimony of the trial last Friday from relatives of the dead sniper shooting victims. That testimony left the jury, and some spectators in court, weeping.
Katrina Hannum, 25, Franklin’s daughter, was the final witness called by the prosecution Friday. And her testimony appeared to have a huge impact on the jury, if tears are used as a measuring device.
Hannum began to cry as she spelled her name for the court reporter. And for most of the time she talked about her mother, the jury cried along with her.
She described her early life to the jury. Her parents separated when she was eight months old. Her mother put herself through college and went to work for the defense department. She said her mother’s work took them around the world and she attended nine different schools. She and her brother were raised without a father figure.
The jury could not have missed the parallel experience that Hannum shared with Malvo.
Morrogh asked Hannum about her brother. “Tommy is 26, gosh I guess he is 26 now,” she said smiling for a moment before tears filled her eyes once again. “He is a wonderful person. The day I lost my mother, I lost my brother, too. He can’t hand it. He can’t be here. . . . The day I lost my mom, I lost my whole family.”
The final question Hannum was asked was simple: How has she been functioning since her mother’s murder?
“I can’t,” she said, crying. “Every day when I get up in the morning I cry. When I go to bed at night I cry. When I go to bed I’m afraid to go to sleep because I have nightmares.”
Then she looked at Malvo and said: “Almost every night I have to I have to watch this man shoot my mom in the head.”
Judge Roush told the jury that one of the criteria for giving Malvo the death penalty, would be if the jury found that the sniper murders were vile.
In Horan’s mind, there was no doubt the killings fit that description and he let the jury know that during his closing argument Monday.
“Five dead human beings selected at random,” Horan said. “Vile? If that is not vile, there is no vile.”
The defense decided not to let Malvo testify on his own behalf.
Once the jury found Malvo guilty of two counts of capital murder, they had the difficult task of convincing the jury that Malvo’s life was one worth saving. The challenge was formidable because of the number of deaths linked to Malvo and Muhammad.
Defense attorney Craig S. Cooley delivered the closing argument on behalf of Malvo, and he stressed Malvo’s relative youth, referring to him as a child throughout his argument. He talked about Malvo’s childhood in Jamaica, his abusive mother, the frequent uprooting of his life, often being left with friends, relative or strangers by his mother.
Cooley talked about Muhammad nearly as much as he talked about Malvo, saying that Malvo never committed a violent act against another human being until Muhammad came into his life.
Cooley had trouble offsetting the emotional testimony of the victims’ family members.
Cooley had been forced to call friends, relative and teachers of Malvo during the guilt phase of the trial. Once the penalty phase began, he was unable to present any witnesses or testimony that he had presented in the first phase of the trial.
The defense tried to elicit emotional responses from witnesses on Monday, but their questions were frequently objected to by Horan as being redundant. The objections were sustained, and the defense ended with an emotional thud.
It was left to Cooley to summon up emotion during his closing argument to the jury.
He appealed to their compassion, mentioned Christmas and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He warned the jury that their life or death decision would stay with them for the rest of their lives. Standing at a lectern facing the jury, holding a rock in the palm of his hand, he recalled that there was once a time in human history when the death penalty was carried out by ordinary citizens.
“You are not holding it,” he said of the rock, “but you can feel the weight of the stone. The stone has no humanity. The stone is has no compassion. And once it has been cast it has no ability to temper its impact.
“And after you have cast it, you can feel on your fingertips the cast of the stone . . . . The commonwealth urges you to kill, to stain yourself with the blood of this child.”
Cooley reminded the jury that in order to sentence Malvo to death, their decision has to be unanimous.
“A sentence of death requires unanimity,” he said. “In order for an execution, you must actively participate or, worse, acquiesce. You have heard and seen the story of Lee Malvo’s life. The mitigation in this case cries out to you. Don’t be swayed by the voices of vengeance and retribution, but hold on to your compassion.”
Malvo and Muhammad were arrested Oct. 24, 2002, at a rural rest area in Frederick County. Their 1990 blue Chevrolet Caprice, which the jurors inspected during the trial, was a treasure chest of evidence. The Bushmaster rifle was discovered in the trunk. The car, police testified, had been reconfigured to allow access to the trunk from the back seat and had a hole drilled in the trunk to allow someone to fire gun from the trunk.
Also found in the car was a laptop computer, stolen from Paul J. LaRuffa, 55, after he was shot and wounded outside his restaurant on Oct. 5, 2002. The laptop was used to identify target areas and plot escape routes.
Malvo told police when he was arrested that everything they needed to know about the shootings was in the laptop. It turned out he was wrong. Most of what made the case against Malvo came out of his interview with police officers.
Despite those initial confessions to federal and local authorities, Malvo later recanted and told defense mental health experts that he was the spotter -- not the triggerman -- in 12 of the 13 Washington area shootings.
Malvo told the mental health experts that Muhammad was the triggerman in all but the final sniper shooting -- Conrad E. Johnson on Oct. 22, 2002.
Malvo told Fairfax County homicide detective June Boyle in the interview that he thought he would get the death penalty.
“It doesn’t scare you?” Boyle asked.
“You want to hang me, okay, poke me, shock me, just gonna last for 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 2 minutes, then you’re dead,” Malvo replied.