Posted on 10/28/2002 9:52:25 PM PST by dead
22 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two murder charges carrying possible death sentences were filed in Virginia on Monday against one of two suspects in the Washington sniper case, part of the legal jockeying over where the pair will stand trial and if executions would be carried out.
John Allen Muhammad, a 41-year-old Gulf War veteran, was charged with capital murder in the Oct. 9 killing of Dean Harold Meyers in Prince William County, Virginia. Muhammad also faces a capital murder charge in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, in the Oct. 11 shooting death of Kenneth Bridges.
Muhammad's 17-year-old traveling companion, John Lee Malvo, was indicted as a minor in Prince William County.
"A juvenile has to be charged and proceeded against in a juvenile court," Prince William County Commonwealth Attorney Paul Ebert said, making it clear he was referring to Malvo but not naming him due to legal restrictions. "We will ask the court to certify the juvenile as an adult."
Muhammad and Malvo already each face six first-degree murder charges in Maryland for the six killings that occurred there.
Two more shooting deaths took place in Virginia and one in Washington.
Monday, police also said two suspects in the Washington-area sniper shootings have been linked to a murder and a synagogue shooting across the country in Tacoma, Washington.
They borrowed from a friend two handguns that were used in the two crimes earlier this year, including the February killing of 21-year-old Keenya Cook, the niece of a former employee of Muhammad, police said.
The pair were arrested after a three-week shooting spree that killed 10 people and injured three. The U.S. capital does not have a death penalty statute but Virginia and Maryland do, and have vowed to use it in this case.
"All the jurisdictions are still talking," said Roscoe Howard, U.S. attorney for Washington. "We are working with the Maryland and Virginia authorities, and obviously the Department of Justice (news - web sites), we're all talking to see what will work best for the case."
PREMEDITATED MURDER
The Spotsylvania indictment alleges Muhammad "did unlawfully and feloniously, willfully, deliberately and with premeditation kill and slay Kenneth Bridges," and includes charges of firearms violations, malicious wounding, conspiracy and attempted murder.
Bridges, a Philadelphia businessman, was gunned down at a service station near the busy I-95 highway in Spotsylvania County south of Washington.
Malvo was not named in that indictment. But both were charged with attempted murder, conspiracy and the commission of a terrorist act in Hanover County, Virginia, on Monday, in the wounding of a 37-year-old man in Ashland, Virginia, on Oct. 19.
The two were arrested last Thursday, ending a three-week shooting rampage that left 10 people dead and three injured. The spree that began Oct. 2 caused widespread fear in and around the Washington area and raised public demands the most severe punishment be sought.
More murder charges were expected in another Virginia county and federal charges were also possible.
Both Maryland and Virginia want the high-profile case, even though Maryland currently has a moratorium on executions. Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening has said there is room in the moratorium to allow an execution in this case.
Maryland officials argue that because most of the victims were killed there, they should try the suspects first.
Virginia authorities maintain their state would be more likely to impose and carry out the death penalty, noting Virginia has executed 86 people since the death penalty was reinstituted in 1976. Maryland has executed three.
FEDERAL CHARGES POSSIBLE
The two suspects are also wanted on a separate murder charge in Alabama, and authorities there have vowed to seek the death sentence.
The federal Justice Department is still pondering what, if any, charges it could file.
Possible federal charges that could carry the death penalty include extortion plus use of a weapon resulting in violent crime or death. Letters found near the site of one shooting told law officers to deposit $10 million in a credit card account.
Prosecutors in Virginia and Maryland have indicated they have evidence that Malvo was the gunman in at least one of the shootings, but would not give details.
A witness in the case who was taken into custody in Michigan over the weekend was expected to be moved to Maryland.
The witness, Nathaniel Osbourne, was the co-owner of a 1990 Chevrolet Caprice in which the two sniper suspects were arrested. The car reportedly was configured as a "sniper's nest" with a fold-down backseat and space for a shooter to fire through a hole in the trunk.
On another front, the Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda ordered an independent panel to investigate how Muhammad got a passport from the Caribbean nation and whether he sold forged identity documents.
BTW: I heard your local rag (The Record) endorsed a Green over Lousenberg and Forrester.
Long before a series of sniper attacks terrorized the suburbs of Washington, D.C., police say the suspected gunmen may have begun their reign of terror on the West Coast with the slaying of a Tacoma woman and a shooting at a synagogue.
Authorities said Monday they had linked John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo to the February shooting death of a 21-year-old woman whose aunt once worked for Muhammad's auto repair business. Police also identified the pair as suspects in a May shooting at a Tacoma synagogue in which no one was injured.
The connection to Muhammad and Malvo is based on information from a Tacoma man who came forward last week and told authorities he loaned the pair his guns. Ballistics tests matched the weapons to slugs found at both shooting scenes.
Malvo, 17, and Muhammad, 41, currently face murder charges in both Virginia and Maryland in the three-week series of attacks that killed 10 people and wounded three. Alabama has charged them in a killing during a robbery.
Tacoma Police Chief David Brame said a man contacted the FBI last week and told authorities he'd allowed Muhammad and Malvo to borrow his weapons, including a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun, while the pair were staying with him earlier this year.
"As a result, we now consider John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo as suspects in the Keenya Cook homicide," Brame said. Authorities said there were no plans to charge the man who came forward.
Investigators recovered three handguns and two rifles from the man, including two allegedly used in the crimes, Tacoma police spokesman Jim Mattheis said.
Cook was shot in the face Feb. 16 when she opened the door to the house where she lived.
Cook's aunt, Isa Nichols, used to be a bookkeeper for Muhammad's auto repair business in the 1990s. Nichols became friends with Muhammad and his then-wife Mildred, and sided with Mildred during that couple's bitter divorce and child-custody dispute.
Cook had moved into Nichols' home in the fall of 2001 for protection from an abusive boyfriend. Members of Cook's family wondered if Isa Nichols may have been the intended target and Cook could have been shot by mistake when she opened the door.
In the synagogue case, Brame said a .44-caliber Magnum, borrowed from the same man, was used in a shooting at Temple Beth El between May 1 and May 4. No one was believed at the synagogue at the time.
One shot struck an outer wall. The other lodged in an interior wall where religious scrolls are kept. The scrolls were not damaged.
Muhammad was in the Army based at Fort Lewis beginning in 1985 and lived in Tacoma off and on after he was honorably discharged in 1994.
On Monday, prosecutors in three Virginia counties announced charges against the pair that could bring the death penalty, a key point in the debate over which jurisdiction should try the alleged gunmen.
Fairfax County prosecutor Robert Horan Jr. said evidence shows that Malvo may have fired the shot that killed FBI analyst Linda Franklin on Oct. 14 outside a Home Depot in Falls Church. He would not elaborate on the evidence.
"There will be some evidence that the juvenile was the shooter just like there will be evidence that the adult was the shooter," Horan said. "But the point is, we don't know right now, and no one knows right now."
The pair also were charged in Spotsylvania County with the murder of Kenneth Bridges on Oct. 11 and the Oct. 4 wounding of an unidentified woman. The murder charges were based on state law allowing capital punishment for the killing of more than one person within three years.
In Prince William County, where Dean Meyers was slain Oct. 9 while pumping gas, a grand jury charged Muhammad and Malvo with capital murder and conspiracy to commit murder under a new post-Sept. 11 terrorism law.
Virginia Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore said the terrorism law gives Virginia prosecutors a "backup, another option in their arsenal" to seek the death penalty against Muhammad or Malvo if either eludes a death sentence for capital murder.
In Hanover County, where an unidentified man was wounded on Oct. 19, the two suspects also were named in a variety of charges including attempted murder and terrorizing the public.
Last week, Maryland filed six first-degree murder counts against the two. But the top elected official in Maryland's Montgomery County urged prosecutors to choose the strongest venue.
Virginia has the death penalty for both adults and juveniles. In Maryland, 17-year-olds are not eligible for the death penalty, and there is no death penalty in the District of Columbia.
I guess Washington state can now prosecute them for a "hate crime". /sarcasm
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