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Malvo's prison term marks a broader trend away from capital punishment for juveniles. By Seth Stern | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor When a Virginia jury voted against a death sentence for Washington-area sniper John Lee Malvo this week, it followed a national trend away from sentencing juvenile offenders to death. The annual death-sentence rate for juvenile offenses has declined rapidly in recent years and death-penalty opponents say it's only a matter of time before capital punishment for those under 18 is eliminated. "The question is whether it will end by states passing laws banning it, the Supreme...

Posted on Wed, Dec. 24, 2003 Malvo spared the death penalty PROSECUTOR ATTRIBUTES JURY'S DECISION TO DEFENDANT'S YOUTHFUL APPEARANCE By Adam Liptak NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE CHESAPEAKE, Va. - A jury spared the life of Lee Boyd Malvo yesterday, instead sentencing him to life in prison without parole for murders and terrorism in the Washington-area sniper shootings last year. The sentence came just weeks after John Allen Muhammad, Malvo's mentor and partner in the sniper attacks, was also convicted of murder and terrorism and was sentenced to death. Malvo, 18, was 17 at the time of the crimes. The...

To be released soon

<p>CHESAPEAKE, Va. — A jury of eight women and four men convicted Lee Boyd Malvo of capital murder yesterday for his role in last year's Washington-area sniper killings — bringing the teenage defendant one step closer to a death sentence.</p>

<p>CHESAPEAKE, Va. — A jury of eight women and four men convicted Lee Boyd Malvo of capital murder yesterday for his role in last year's Washington-area sniper killings — bringing the teenage defendant one step closer to a death sentence.</p>

<p>CHESAPEAKE, Va.  — A woman who lost her father in the Washington-area sniper shootings (search) last year confronted teenage sniper Lee Boyd Malvo (search) from the stand Friday, calling him "evil" as she described the impact of her father's death.</p> <p>"Because of you, he didn't have a chance to see his great-grandchild. That's insane of you to do. You're evil," said Myrtha Cinada, daughter of Pascal Charlot, the fifth person killed in the shootings, who testified during the sentencing phase of Malvo's trial. Malvo was convicted of two counts of capital murder Thursday and the jury must now decide whether he should receive life in prison or death.</p>

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<p>CHESAPEAKE, Virginia (CNN) -- Teen sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo wrote letters to a fellow inmate this summer, coaching him on ways to fool authorities and encouraging him to look for opportunities to escape, prosecutors disclosed Monday.</p> <p>Prosecutors said the three undated letters were written this summer, at a time when defense attorneys claim Malvo, now 18, had broken free of the psychological grip of his alleged sniper partner, John Allen Muhammad.</p>

The Psychology of Junior Sniper Lee Malvo by Michael J. Hurd The defense psychiatrist for the D.C. sniper, Lee Malvo, claims that Malvo was unable to distinguish right from wrong. In other words, he didn't know that it was wrong to shoot innocent people at gas stations and department stores. Why not? Not because he was psychotic or schizophrenic, meaning completely out of touch with reality (in which case he would not have executed these shootings so competently). Instead, we're supposed to believe that he was so "pathologically loyal" to the elder sniper John Muhammad that he couldn't help but...

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (AP) -- Sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo has mental diseases that left him "psychologically numb" and legally insane because he couldn't tell right from wrong, a defense psychiatrist said. During the months he lived with convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad starting in 2000, Malvo lost his sense of identity and became vulnerable to Muhammad's wishes and "intense, coercive persuasion," psychiatrist Neil Blumberg testified Wednesday in Malvo's murder trial. Malvo's dissociative disorder that allowed him to tune out reality, his depression and a childhood "conduct disorder" of shoplifting and cat-killing all meant Malvo was "unable to distinguish between right...

Dec 10, 2003 Psychiatrists Testify Teen Sniper Suspect Malvo Could Not Tell Right From Wrong By Matthew Barakat Associated Press Writer CHESAPEAKE, Va. (AP) - Lee Boyd Malvo did not know right from wrong during last year's sniper spree because of intense indoctrination by sniper mastermind John Allen Muhammad, two defense psychiatrists testified Wednesday at Malvo's trial. "Lee was unable to distinguish between right and wrong and was unable to resist the impulse" to commit the sniper killings, said Neil Blumberg, who examined Malvo 20 times in jail. Psychiatrist Diane Schetky, who twice interviewed Malvo, also testified that Malvo, 17...

From the moment John Allen Muhammad and Lee Malvo were arrested in the Beltway-area sniper case last fall, the media and Muslim activists wanted us to believe that the serial killings had absolutely nothing to do with Islamic terrorism. CNN downplayed Muhammad's religious conversion — calling him by his old name, John Allen Williams, when his identity was first revealed. Malvo was cast as a clueless dupe with no true convictions. Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) argued: "There is no indication that this case is related to Islam or Muslims." Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper railed...

<p>Chesapeake, Va. — Teenage sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo was so despondent in the months before the Washington-area sniper spree that he tried to kill himself, a psychiatrist testified Tuesday. By the late summer of 2002, Malvo believed he would likely die because of the "mission" he and sniper mastermind John Allen Muhammad were about to launch, said Diane Schetky, a forensic psychiatrist who twice interviewed Malvo in jail.</p>

<p>CHESAPEAKE - When Linda Franklin was shot and killed last fall, Lee Boyd Malvo suffered from a "dissociative disorder," a "substantial impairment" that qualifies as a mental disease, a forensic psychologist told jurors during the teen's capital-murder trial yesterday.</p> <p>Dewey G. Cornell, a University of Virginia psychology professor who has testified at dozens of criminal trials, said Malvo "is, in my experience, a very unusual, rare case."</p>

CHESAPEAKE, Va. - Lee Boyd Malvo believed John Allen Muhammad would kill him if he ever deviated from the plan in last year's sniper spree, a psychologist testified Monday at Malvo's murder trial. Muhammad's two rules for the pair's mission were "whatever it takes" and "no turning back," said Dewey Cornell, a University of Virginia psychologist who interviewed Malvo more than 20 times after his arrest. Muhammad often told Malvo that Malvo should shoot and kill Muhammad if he ever strayed from the mission, Cornell said. Malvo assumed the same would happen to him if he deviated, according to the...

 Picture of the Day - LIX (see all)The Religion of Snipers While many news outlets are carrying the D.C. area sniper trial, they are desperately lacking in any real analysis of what these crimes really mean. Is this terrorism? Did religion -- namely Islam -- play a role in the killings? Is this connected to Osama's al Qaeda, even if only via ideology? And, is any of this related to the new shooting spree in Ohio? Yes, yes, yes and yes... and I have evidence to back my claims. What follows are official court documents from the Malvo case in...

CHESAPEAKE, Va. - Consumed with righting racial inequality and injustice, sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo became yesterday the latest young defendant to use the film The Matrix as part of an insanity defense to explain killings that seem to have no clear explanation. The 1999 film has been used, with some success, in at least three other murder cases in which young defendants attempted to justify their crimes with allusions to the movie's philosophy that the world people live in is only a dream sequence controlled by a computer. Violence is condoned as a way to get out of the...

<p>CHESAPEAKE, Virginia (CNN) -- Testimony resumed Friday in the sniper shooting trial of Lee Boyd Malvo a day after a social worker described how the defendant told her of creating a group of "super children" to combat racial injustice around the world.</p>

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (AP) - A former platoon sergeant was so unnerved by John Allen Muhammad, who was suspected of tossing a grenade into an Army tent in 1991, that he scribbled the soldier's name and dog-tag number on a piece of paper he still keeps in his wallet. "I considered him a threat," Kip Berentson, 48, said Wednesday of the sniper mastermind at the trial of Muhammad's alleged accomplice. No one was wounded in the 1991 grenade attack and no charges were brought. Lawyers for 18-year-old sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo are pursuing an insanity defense, contending Muhammad brainwashed the...

CHESAPEAKE, Va. -- A clinical psychologist who examined sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo this summer said Thursday that the teenager was unusually cheerful during the exam, which he classified as odd behavior. Malvo is accused of being the triggerman in the series of sniper shootings that left 10 people dead and terrorized the Washington area last fall. David Schretlen said he was immediately struck by Malvo's cheerfulness. He called it "out of step with the seriousness of the situation." Schretlin said Malvo also was eager to show how smart he is. Tests show the 18-year-old has an IQ of 98,...

<p>CHESAPEAKE, Virginia (CNN) -- Several dozen jailhouse sketches by accused sniper Lee Boyd Malvo -- some depicting police in rifle crosshairs and others containing references to a holy war -- have been entered as evidence by defense attorneys, who say they are evidence of his indoctrination by an accomplice.</p>

<p>CHESAPEAKE, Va. -- Jurors in the Lee Boyd Malvo trial yesterday began getting a fuller picture from the teen-ager's attorneys about how they believe John Allen Muhammad lured the youth under his control and put him on a regimented lifestyle that included doing 50 push-ups as punishment for misbehavior.</p> <p>The testimony was part of the defense's groundwork for its push to convince the jury that Malvo was desperate for adult attention and was so brainwashed by Muhammad that it should find him not guilty because of insanity. A jury convicted Muhammad last month, and said he should be sentenced to death for the sniper killings that terrorized several states last fall.</p>

CHESAPEAKE, Va. — The principal of a school that sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo (search) attended testified Tuesday that Malvo's mother approved the designation of John Allen Muhammad (search) as his guardian and that Malvo left the school roughly two weeks after she took a Koran (search) away from him. Rest of story:Here

Thanks for taking this poll If convicted, should Lee Boyd Malvo receive the death penalty. Why?

<p>VIRGINIA BEACH (AP) — Sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo told police that he fatally shot Dean Harold Meyers in the head because he did not have an easier shot to the body. He also said he was the gunman in all of the sniper shootings, and "I intended to kill them all."</p>

<p>CHESAPEAKE - Just as clay is molded by a potter, Lee Boyd Malvo was shaped into a "child soldier" who helped execute a string of sniper attacks advancing the twisted goals of fellow suspect John Allen Muhammad, Malvo's lawyer asserted in court yesterday. Attorney Craig S. Cooley spoke to jurors after prosecutor Robert F. Horan Jr. described Malvo, 18, as an intelligent, willing and savvy killer who bragged about shooting innocent people as they went about their daily tasks.</p>

One of the two accused Washington snipers, John Allen Muhammad, pleaded not guilty at the start of his first trial over the 10 random killings last year that terrorised the US capital. Muhammad, 42, could face the death penalty if found guilty. The trial has drawn enormous attention in the United States and some relatives of the victims of the shootings were in court. Wearing a white shirt and black tie, Muhammad denied the four murder, terrorism and weapons charges against him and told Judge Leroy Millette he understood the accusations. He watched silently as the start of the selection...

<p>October 10, 2003 -- FAIRFAX, Va. - Sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo's lawyers filed notice yesterday that they will mount an insanity defense at his murder trial next month.</p> <p>A court-appointed psychiatrist has met with Malvo more than a dozen times in recent months and those conversations formed the basis for the decision, according to defense lawyers.</p>

International laws and treaties do not prohibit Virginia from executing juveniles, a judge ruled Wednesday in the case against teenage sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo. Defense lawyers had argued that an overwhelming consensus of foreign nations and certain international treaties combined to bar the execution of people under 18 at the time of their crime. "The world has spoken. This isn't a close call. This is the world against us," said defense lawyer Craig Cooley. "Some things are so absolutely abhorrent to humanity that it is simply unacceptable. We are at that point when we talk about the execution of...

FAIRFAX, Va. -- Prosecutors in the case against sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo are resisting defense lawyers' demands for a detailed accounting of the government's theory of the case. In a court motion released Thursday, prosecutors said the defense motion was a "fishing expedition" and that Malvo's attorneys already have learned much of the government's case during lengthy pretrial hearings. Malvo "seeks to discover every fact that the Commonwealth may present at trial as well as its theories with respect to all of the evidence," wrote Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Raymond Morrogh, who called the defense team's arguments "feeble at best."...

<p>A Fairfax County, Va., judge ruled yesterday that jurors may hear testimony from two Supermax prison officers who say that teen-age sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo bragged to them about killings, shootings and other near-attacks after he was arrested last fall.</p> <p>At a hearing in July, the correctional officers testified that two days after his arrest Oct. 24, Malvo, then 17, began revealing details about the random shootings that gripped the Baltimore-to-Richmond, Va., corridor during three weeks in October.</p>

<p>Malvo, 18, and John Allen Muhammad, 42, are charged with killing 10 people and wounding three.</p>

Sniper trial jury screening debated By JON FRANK, The Virginian-Pilot © August 19, 2003 Last updated: 11:48 PM John Allen Muhammad Related: Judge won't let Muhammad's defense hire jury consultantMore news on the sniper trials MANASSAS -- Potential jurors will not be asked about their religious practices on a written questionnaire when the sniper trial of John Allen Muhammad begins in Virginia Beach on Oct. 14. At a hearing Monday in Manassas, Circuit Judge LeRoy F. Millette began narrowing down the questions that possible jurors will be asked in writing before attorneys start choosing who will decide Muhammad's fate. The...

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) - The teenager accused in a string of sniper killings last year said he wounded a 13-year-old boy in order to make the police chief hunting him "emotional," a prison guard testified. Joseph Stracke, a captain at the Supermax prison in Baltimore, testified at a pretrial hearing Thursday that Lee Boyd Malvo spoke proudly of the shootings allegedly committed by him and fellow suspect John Allen Muhammad. The conversation occurred Oct. 26, two days after Malvo's arrest. Stracke said he asked Malvo why he shot Iran Brown, 13, outside a Bowie, Md., middle school. "To make Chief...

<p>FAIRFAX, Virginia (CNN) -- A judge Wednesday ordered a change of venue for Lee Boyd Malvo, the teenage suspect in last year's sniper shootings.</p> <p>The new venue will be the circuit court in Chesapeake, Virginia, about 200 miles south from Fairfax County, Virginia, where his trial was scheduled to be held.</p>

<p>FAIRFAX, Va. — Sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo told a prison guard that he shot a teenage victim to anger Montgomery County, Md., Police Chief Charles Moose and that he had intended to shoot an entire busload of children, the guard testified Thursday.</p>

Lawyers: Malvo Spoke Proudly of Shootings Fri Jul 18, 7:39 PM ET Add U.S. National By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press Writer FAIRFAX, Va. - Sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo willingly and proudly discussed the sniper shootings with two prison guards the day after his arrest, so his statements should be admissible in court, prosecutors said. "He was relaxed and calm as he related his past criminal activities," prosecutor Raymond Morrogh wrote in a motion filed Thursday and made public Friday. "His demeanor with the guards was that of one who was proud of his accomplishments and comfortable with the brutal...

<p>FAIRFAX, Virginia (CNN) -- A police detective who interrogated sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo said the teenager gleefully recounted some of the shootings during the three-week spree last fall that left 10 dead and wounded four others.</p> <p>The statements were made during a six-and-a-half-hour interview with Fairfax County, Virginia, investigators last November 7, in which Malvo reportedly was laughing when he described the shooting death of 47-year-old Linda Franklin, Fairfax County Police detective June Boyle testified Monday.</p>

The 'boys' of Gitmo and 'boy' Malvo Human rights groups are demanding that the U.S. release "children" being detained at Guantanamo Bay. The detentions are a "shocking indicator of how cavalier the Bush administration has become about respecting human rights," said Amnesty International spokesman Alistair Hodgett. Before you cry buckets over the poor, abused tots at Gitmo, let's make one thing clear: We are not talking about hordes of peace-loving, cherubic grade-schoolers (like the kind who were freed from Saddam's prisons by American troops). We are talking about four male juveniles captured as active enemy combatants against U.S. forces --...

Apr 24, 2003 Sniper Suspect Loses Phone, Visiting Privileges for Sending Letter to Another Inmate The Associated Press FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) - Sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo has lost his phone and visiting privileges in jail for 25 days as punishment for writing to another inmate that a deputy sheriff should be "fatally injured." Malvo, 18, is being held at the Fairfax County jail on a capital murder charge in the Oct. 14 shooting of Linda Franklin, 47, outside a Home Depot store. At a brief administrative hearing Wednesday, Malvo was found guilty of threatening a jail employee and writing...

Malvo Freely Confessed, Even Laughed, Prosecutors Say Authorities Argue Laughter Proves Malvo Confession Was Not Coerced Posted: 11:09 a.m. EDT April 22, 2003 Updated: 11:19 a.m. EDT April 22, 2003 FAIRFAX, Va. -- Prosecutors say the teenage suspect linked to a string of sniper shootings in the Washington, D.C. area, willingly confessed to some of the shootings during a police interview last fall. In legal briefs made public Tuesday, prosecutors say Lee Boyd Malvo laughed as he recalled shooting an FBI analyst in the head and chuckled about the reaction of a boy he shot at and missed. The...

<p>FAIRFAX, Va. — Sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo is facing more disciplinary action in jail after allegedly writing a letter to another inmate saying that a deputy sheriff should be "fatally injured," jail officials said.</p> <p>Malvo, 18, is being held at the Fairfax County jail on capital murder charges in the Oct. 14 shooting of Linda Franklin, 47, outside a Home Depot store.</p>

<p>Some of the victims of last fall's sniper shootings in the Washington, D.C., area were shot in the head for the ''horrific effect'' and to make a point to police, but the boy who was shot outside a Bowie, Md., middle school was hit in the back because other children were nearby, suspect Lee Boyd Malvo told investigators, according to law enforcement documents.</p>

Attorneys for Sniper Suspect John Lee Malvo Say Documents Wrongly Taken From His Cell Block FAIRFAX, Va. March 16 — Writings and drawings were taken secretly by officials from a cell block where sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo was held and incorrectly made public, said attorneys for Malvo and his co-defendant. The two pages of notes and pictures scribbled on the back of Fairfax County jail forms were photocopied and provided to investigators on the task force preparing for the trials of Malvo, 18, and John Allen Muhammad, 42. They were published Sunday by The Washington Post. Michael Arif, one...

awyers for Lee Malvo, the 18-year-old charged in last fall's Washington-area sniper attacks, said they would challenge recent changes to the jury selection process that they say will decrease the number of minority candidates in the juror pool and violate their client's rights.Earlier this year, the county clerk in Fairfax County, Va., where Mr. Malvo faces trial in November, eliminated the use of driver records as a source of candidates for the pool.Instead, the clerk, John T. Frey, decided only to rely on voter registration rolls to select jurors in an effort to cut the cost of processing the...

FAIRFAX, Va. - Teenage sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo lost some of his jail privileges Friday after scrawling the word "Muhammad" on the floor of his cell and writing on his shoes. A hearing officer sentenced Malvo to two days of segregation, which means he will stay in his cell all day. Malvo, 18, also lost 15 days of recreation and will go back to eating a vegetarian loaf his lawyers had said made him ill. * * * On Feb. 24, a deputy also reported hearing Malvo say to another inmate, "I would like to cut her throat," and...

WASHINGTON — Sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo has been barred from exercise sessions in the Fairfax County jail gymnasium for 15 days because he wrote "Muhammad," the name of his alleged co-conspirator, on his cell floor, jail officials said yesterday. Malvo, 18, also will be fed "the loaf" — a baked concoction of cheese, bread and vegetables that his lawyers have said made him sick — for two days and will have a mattress in his concrete cell for only eight hours each of those days because he drew smiley faces on his jail-issued sneakers, according to Malvo's attorney and...

<p>FAIRFAX, Va. — Teenage sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo lost some of his jail privileges Friday after scrawling the word "Muhammad" on the floor of his cell and writing on his shoes.</p> <p>A hearing officer sentenced Malvo to 15 days of segregation, which means he will stay in his cell all day. Malvo, 18, also lost two days of recreation and will go back to eating a vegetarian loaf his lawyers had said made him ill.</p>

<p>FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) -- A judge rejected defense arguments Monday that Virginia's death penalty law is unconstitutional and barred cameras in the courtroom for the trial of teenage sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo.</p> <p>Malvo's lawyer had argued that the instructions given to a jury on when to recommend the death penalty are too vague.</p>