A man who as a teenager participated in a terrifying killing spree that left more than a dozen people dead has been granted a new sentencing hearing in Virginia.
Lee Boyd Malvo, now 33, was sentenced in 2004 to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a series of four murders he and John Allen Muhammad committed as the Beltway snipers. Malvo was just 17 at the time of the slayings, and Muhammad, his mentor, was 41.
The snipers terrorized the greater Washington, D.C., area during a three-week span in 2002 that saw them kill four people and injure three others in Virginia. Another six people were gunned down in the Maryland suburbs in that same time frame.
The pair was captured in October 2002 as they slept at a rest stop in a Chevy Caprice they had modified so they could fire a rifle, undetected, through a hole in the car’s trunk. The Washington Post reported that Muhammad and Malvo were tied to another 11 shootings across the country, five of them deadly.
In the years since Malvo’s and Muhammad’s convictions, and Muhammad’s subsequent 2009 execution for his Virginia crimes, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that defendants who committed serious crimes while under the age of 18 cannot be sentenced to death.
They also cannot be sentenced to a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole, the ruling stated. The new laws became retroactive in 2016, meaning that sentences of death or life without parole that were legal at the time they were handed down could now be vacated.
A three-member panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled on Thursday that Malvo falls into that category and vacated his four life sentences. His case has been remanded to a lower court for resentencing.
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“To be clear, the crimes committed by Malvo and John Muhammad were the most heinous random acts of premeditated violence conceivable, destroying lives and families and terrorizing the entire Washington, D.C., metropolitan area for over six weeks, instilling mortal fear daily in the citizens of that community,” Judge Paul Niemeyer wrote in the ruling. “But Malvo was 17 years old when he committed the murders, and he has the retroactive benefit of new constitutional rules that treat juveniles differently for sentencing.
“We make this ruling not with any satisfaction but to sustain the law. As for Malvo, who knows but God how he will bear the future.”
See the appeals court’s entire ruling below.
Lee Boyd Malvo Ruling by c_bonvillian on Scribd
The order for a new sentencing applies only to Malvo’s Virginia crimes. He also pleaded guilty to six murders in Maryland, where he was given six life sentences.
Thursday’s ruling does not affect his prison time in Maryland, according to The Washington Post. A Montgomery County judge last August upheld those sentences because they were not mandatory life terms.
A spokeswoman for Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring told the Post that his staff attorneys plan to “review the decision closely and decide how best to proceed in a way that ensures this convicted mass murderer faces justice for his heinous crimes.” The attorney general can either ask the entire appeals court for a rehearing, appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court or go forward with the new sentencing hearing.
If the sentencing hearing goes forward, Malvo could still be sentenced to life in prison. The appeals court ruling indicated that it depends on whether the district court finds that Malvo’s crimes reflected “permanent incorrigibility” or the “transient immaturity of youth.”
The appeals court’s ruling listed a timeline of most of Malvo and Muhammad’s crimes:
Adams told The New York Times shortly after the shooting that she thought she had been struck by lightning. Witnesses, including two police officers, spotted a man rifling through the women’s purses before escaping during a short foot chase, the Times reported.
A blue sedan was also spotted near the scene, which helped lead investigators to the snipers after Malvo’s fingerprint, found on the page of a magazine he dropped in Montgomery, identified him as a suspect.
The four Montgomery County victims were killed in the morning within a span of about two hours, according to authorities. Around 9:20 p.m. that same night, Pascal Charlot, 72, was shot while walking in D.C.
The shootings on the appeals court’s list are not all of the crimes that Malvo and Muhammad have been linked to, and Malvo has said that the pair shot more people than those investigators have identified.
Malvo told Virginia investigators after his arrest that he and Muhammad, who he considered his father, acted as a sniper team in order to extort $10 million from the “media and the government,” the appeals court ruling stated. He initially confessed to being the shooter in 10 of the incidents.
When testifying at trial in Fairfax County, however, Malvo admitted only to shooting the 13-year-old boy in Prince George’s County and the Montgomery County bus driver who was killed. All others, Muhammad shot, the teen claimed.
At that point, Malvo’s defense team was asserting an insanity defense, alleging that the boy, who had an abusive and lonely childhood in Jamaica and Antigua, was indoctrinated by Muhammad, who took him under his wing when Malvo was 15. Muhammad had taken his own three children to Antigua without their mother’s knowledge, the court ruling stated.
Muhammad, a U.S. Army veteran who ultimately lost custody of his children, trained Malvo intensively in military tactics for almost a year, telling the teen that he had a plan to get his children back, the ruling stated.
Mildred Muhammad, his ex-wife, has said she believed she was the ultimate target of her former husband’s rage, CNN reported. Prosecutors during John Muhammad’s trials argued that the sniper shootings were a smoke screen to hide his goal of killing Mildred and regaining custody of their children.
Malvo told “Today” in 2012 that he was sexually abused by John Muhammad. He also described the psychological hold he said Muhammad had on him.
“I couldn’t say no,” Malvo said. “I had wanted that level of love and acceptance and consistency for all of my life and couldn’t find it. And even if unconsciously, or even in moments of short reflection, I knew that it was wrong, I did not have the willpower to say no.”
In interviews with the Post, Malvo called himself a “monster.”
“If you look up the definition, that’s what a monster is” Malvo told the newspaper. “I was a ghoul. I was a thief. I stole people’s lives. I did someone else’s bidding just because they said so. There is no rhyme or reason or sense.”
Malvo told “Today” producers that the interview would be his last about the crimes, he said he had forgiven himself for his crimes because that is the “only way (he) can live with (himself.)”
He also urged the families of the victims to find peace and forgiveness.
“Please do not allow my actions and the actions of Muhammad to hold you hostage and continue to victimize you for the rest of your life,” Malvo said. “If you give those images and thoughts that power, it will continue to inflict that suffering over and over and over, and over and over again. Do not give me or him that much power.”
Malvo is housed at Red Onion State Prison in Pound, Virginia.
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On this day in 2003, ex-soldier John Muhammad is found guilty of one of a series of sniper shootings that terrorized the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area and dominated national headlines in October 2002. Police charged that Muhammad and his 17-year-old accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, killed 10 people and wounded three others during a three-week killing spree. After just over six hours of deliberation, a jury convicted Muhammad of the October 9, 2002, shooting of Dean Meyers while he pumped gas at a Sunoco station in Manassas, Virginia.
The first of the “Beltway sniper” attacks occurred on October 2, 2002, when five people died after being shot at long range over a 15-hour span in suburban Montgomery County, Maryland. Sniper-style shootings continued over the next three weeks—at gas stations and in parking lots within Washington, D.C.’s Beltway area and along Interstate 95 in Virginia. Local residents, frightened by the seemingly random nature of the shootings, which crossed racial, gender, and socioeconomic lines, crouched behind their cars while pumping gas and avoided outdoor activities. Schools held recess indoors and sports teams cancelled outdoor practices. The killers left a series of cryptic clues at crime scenes including tarot cards and notes and even called the police hotline, apparently trying to engage investigators in a dialogue.
The attacks came to an end when police arrested Muhammad and Malvo at a rest area off a Maryland highway. Their car, a dark blue Chevrolet Caprice, had been rigged with a hole in the trunk through which the shooter could fire a gun without being seen.
Muhammad, 41 at the time of the shootings, was a father of four who had been divorced twice. Although he had a clean criminal record, Mildred Mohammad, one of his former wives, had filed a restraining order against him. In 1985, Muhammad had converted to Islam, changing his name from John Allen Williams. He was reportedly a member of the Nation of Islam. In the aftermath of his arrest, police asserted that Muhammad had expressed some sympathy with the September 11 attacks and might have been acting out of anti-American sentiment. Later reports, which coincide with a letter he left on the scene of one of the murders, alleged that the murder spree was part of an attempt to extort $10 million from the government.
Muhammad served in the U.S. Army from November 1985 until he was honorably discharged as a sergeant in April 1994. He was a veteran of the first Gulf War. While in the army, he was trained as a marksman, qualifying as an “expert” with an M-16 rifle, the highest of the army’s three levels of marksmanship for an ordinary soldier. To qualify as an expert, Muhammad would have had to hit at least 36 of 40 targets at distances ranging from 50 to 300 meters. During his arrest, police found a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle—the civilian version of the M-16—in Muhammad’s car. All of the D.C. sniper victims had been hit by .223-caliber bullets.
In the six-week trial, the prosecution produced more than 130 witnesses and 400 pieces of evidence. Though their case was largely circumstantial—there was no eyewitness to prove that he had actually pulled the trigger—Muhammad was convicted on all four counts against him: the murder of Dean Meyers, murder with the intent to terrorize the government or public, conspiracy to commit murder, and the illegal use of a firearm.
John Muhammad was sentenced to death on March 9, 2004. After a separate trial, Lee Boyd Malvo, who was a minor at the time of the shootings, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In October of 2002, the Beltway Sniper attacks paralyzed the Washington, D.C., area with fear. A shooting and killing spree conducted by two men with sniper rifles was unfolding in front of the eyes of the nation, thanks to television media. There were so many terrifying aspects of the 2002 sniper killings, from the tarot cards left as killer calling cards to the unconnected nature of the D.C. sniper victims. And then there was the scope of the event itself. After the two shooters were caught, authorities learned that John A. Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo had likely shot people in seven states, as well as the D.C. area.
The facts of the case became more bizarre as authorities searched for answers as to why 17-year-old Malvo would participate in such heinous crimes. As the trial for Malvo unfolded, the young man's lawyers claimed that he was brainwashed by Muhammad. The defense didn't work; ultimately, Malvo was sentenced to life in prison, while Muhammad was executed.
The horrific shootings may be over, but the dark legacy of the Beltway Snipers lives on.
While the shootings in and around Washington, D.C. are most identified with the attacks, they were actually part of a nationwide crime spree. John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo began the shootings in Washington state, and then moved east. All told, the two men shot people in Washington, Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, and D.C. They were definitively linked to 10 deaths and three injuries, though they likely caused many more during their rampage across the country.
One of the most chilling aspects of the shooting spree is the random nature of the attacks. The victims had nothing in common other than their deaths. They were different ages, races, and genders.
On October 2, 2002, 55-year-old James Martin was killed exiting a grocery store in Glenmont, MD. Then, the spree seemed to begin in earnest: on October 3, the snipers killed four more people in just over 12 hours in Montgomery County, MD. James L. 'Sonny' Buchanan, a 39-year-old, was shot while mowing a lawn; 53-year-old Premkumar Walekar was killed while pumping gas. Shortly thereafter, 34-year-old Sarah Ramos was gunned down while sitting on a bench, and 25-year-old Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera was shot while vacuuming a car. The rampage lasted until October 22.
The attacks rattled the community. As one woman said, 'We all vacuum our cars. We all get gas. We all go shopping and mow our lawns. We could have been there.'
One of the shooters left a note demanding $10 million be wired into an account connected to a stolen credit card. The message was found outside of a Ponderosa Steakhouse where the sniper shot and wounded a man on October 19, 2002, and it contained horrifying passages:
'Your failure to respond has cost you five lives... If stopping the killing is more important than catching us now, then you will accept our demand [sic] which are non-negotiable... Your children are not safe anywhere at any time.'
That wasn't all the men left at the scenes of their crimes. They also left tarots card with images of death, bearing the message 'Call Me God.'
As authorities searched for a motive behind the sniper attacks, it became clear that the men had aimed to spread terror. Lee Boyd Malvo testified that John Muhammad had planned to shoot one person for 30 days straight, murder a police officer, place bombs in school buses, and attack the funeral of the police officer they intended to kill.
Muhammad apparently hoped to get money from the government in an extortion scheme to end the shootings. He then planned to use the money to fund a camp to train children to commit acts of terrorism in the United States.
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WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Virginia on Friday ruled that a man who terrorized this region 15 years ago as the so-called Beltway Sniper must be resentenced because the life sentences imposed when he was a teenager are unconstitutional.
Judge Raymond A. Jackson of the Federal District Court in Norfolk, Va., ordered two state courts to hold new sentencing hearings for Lee Boyd Malvo, who was 17 when he was sentenced in 2002.
Mr. Malvo and an older man, John A. Muhammad, went on a horrific shooting spree in 2002 that left at least 10 people dead in Washington, and in its Maryland and Virginia suburbs. The random nature of the shootings, which spread out over three weeks, amplified the terror; schools kept children inside and people stayed indoors, for fear of becoming the next victims.
Mr. Muhammad was sentenced to death and was executed at a Virginia state prison in 2009. Mr. Malvo was convicted of one count of murder at a trial in Virginia, and also entered into a plea agreement; in both cases he received life sentences without parole.
Judge Jackson based his ruling on a 2012 Supreme Court decision in an Alabama case that found the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment barred mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for juveniles.
Although that case came 10 years after Mr. Malvo’s sentencing, the judge wrote that the constitutional questions raised by the Malvo case were “so fundamental” that the Supreme Court’s decision needed to be applied retroactively.
“Indeed,” the judge wrote, “it is doubtful that there exists a public policy more foundational than those safeguarding the constitutional due process by which the state deprives citizens of their life and liberty.”