| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front |
| Malvo guilty - eligible for death penalty |
| 2003-12-18 |
| EFL - read the long article for details Lee Boyd Malvo was found guilty Thursday of killing a woman during last fall’s sniper shootings that terrorized Washington, D.C., and outlying areas of Virginia and Maryland. Malvo, who was 17 at the time of the shootings, could face the death penalty. He had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The jury deliberated about 13 hours over two days before finding Malvo guilty of terrorism and capital murder in the October 14, 2002, killing of FBI analyst Linda Franklin outside a Home Depot in Falls Church, Virginia. Malvo also was found guilty on one count of using a firearm in commission of a felony. Franklin was one of 10 people killed in the sniper attacks. Three others were wounded. The same jury of eight women and four men will begin hearing testimony Friday to decide whether to recommend the death penalty or life in prison without parole. The firearms charge carries a mandatory three-year sentence. Two psychiatrists called by the defense testified that years of abuse and neglect by his mother and the persuasive techniques used by Muhammad left Malvo with dissociative disorder -- a disruption of the integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity or perception of the environment. The mental illness rendered him incapable of telling right from wrong, they said. "Did he know right from wrong?" defense attorney Michael Arif asked the jury. "Right was what John Muhammad said was right and wrong." Prosecutors came armed with their own experts and depicted Malvo’s insanity defense as a "smoke screen." They said Malvo was aware his actions were wrong and conducted his sniper missions with cool calculation and a studied indifference to his victims’ pain. Malvo’s childhood neglect and abuse was not an excuse, they said. "A hard life is not a mental disease," prosecutor Robert F. Horan Jr. told the jury. a breath of sanity in a PC world |
| Posted by:rkb |