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Last-minute appeals filed for Beltway Sniper

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Los Angeles Times

Published: November 9, 2009

WASHINGTON - Seven years ago, the captured "Beltway Snipers" - John Allen Muhammad, 41, and his 17-year old accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo - were in federal custody, accused of 16 shootings and 10 murders. They had set out to create a reign of terror in the Washington area to match the terrorist attacks of the year before.
Attorney General John Ashcroft had a choice: He could send them to be tried in Maryland, where most of the murders took place but where the death penalty was on hold because of the specter of racial unfairness; or he could send them to Virginia, the site of three of the killings and where death sentences are carried out swiftly.

Ashcroft chose Virginia.

Muhammad is scheduled to die Tuesday by lethal injection in a Virginia prison, his initial appeals having been dismissed by state and federal judges.

"History has borne out the attorney general made the right call," said Mark Corallo, his spokesman at the time. "These crimes were so brutally cold-blooded and calculated."

Muhammad's new lawyers lodged a final set of emergency appeals with the Supreme Court last week. Their main claim is the case has moved too quickly. They said judges in Virginia cut short the time for filing appeals and refused to hold a single hearing after the trial.
Jonathan Sheldon describes his client as mentally ill.

"He is delusional, paranoid and incompetent. He was angry at the government after he came back from the Gulf War," Sheldon said.

LIFE SENTENCE

Lee Boyd Malvo, John Allen Muhammad's 17-year-old accomplice, was convicted of the murders but, because of his youth, was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

A native of Jamaica, Malvo briefly lived in Miami and attended high school there.

In 2006, two years after he was sentenced to life without parole, he told authorities that he and Muhammad were involved in four other shootings, including one at a Clearwater golf course on May 18, 2002. The other shootings were in 2002 California, Texas, and Louisiana.

Los Angeles Times, biography.com

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