Lawyers acting for the main suspect in the Washington area sniper case have appealed to the public to respect the presumption of innocence in US law. John Allen Muhammad was arrested last Thursday, with a young companion, John Lee Malvo. Since their arrests, the killings have come to an end but Mr Muhammad's court-appointed lawyer, Jim Wyda, called on people to respect his client's right to a presumption of innocence and a fair trial. "What we're asking you to do, and asking the public to do, is to respect that process. Mr Muhammad needs it very badly. This is a situation when there is so much emotion and so much passion that breeds the chance for error and mistake," Mr Wyda said.
"Just ignore all those dead people. Prentend this is something you didn't have to go through, some other people you never heard of, that it was somewhere else, on the other side of the world..." |