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Disparities in malvos interviews questioned { December 12 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57863-2003Dec11.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57863-2003Dec11.html
Disparities In Malvo's Interviews Questioned
By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 12, 2003; Page B01
CHESAPEAKE, Va., Dec. 11 -- Just a few weeks ago, jurors listened intently to a tape of Lee Boyd Malvo laughing and boasting to detectives about shooting FBI analyst Linda Franklin and others during last fall's sniper shootings. "I can hit you in the head from the car or I can hit you in the head from outside," he said on the tape.
But over the past couple of days, the same jurors have been hearing a wildly different story. Through a battery of mental health experts hired by his attorneys, Malvo claimed he was only sitting in the passenger seat or watching from outside the Chevrolet Caprice while his partner, John Allen Muhammad, climbed into the trunk and gunned down unsuspecting victims.
Was Malvo lying to investigators or to the psychiatrists? The jurors will soon have to sort through the two versions as they weigh Malvo's responsibility for the sniper rampage, which killed 10 people and wounded three others in the Washington region.
Fairfax County prosecutors believe that Malvo, now 18, was the triggerman in many of the sniper slayings, based on his first statements to police, and they are seeking the death penalty on murder charges related to Franklin's slaying Oct. 14, 2002.
Malvo's attorneys are arguing that the teenager was temporarily insane because of indoctrination by Muhammad, and they ended their case with three mental health experts who testified that Malvo suffered from a mental disease, dissociative disorder, at the time of the shootings.
Defense psychiatrist Neil Blumberg was the only witness Thursday, but he provided plenty of new details for the jury to ponder. In some cases, the details were telling.
He told Blumberg there were "lots of Latinos in the area" when Franklin was killed. She was shot in the Seven Corners neighborhood, which has a large Hispanic population.
He also told Blumberg that the fatal shot fired at Pascal Charlot on Oct. 3, 2002, came from a parking lot in Northwest Washington. Witnesses along Georgia Avenue, however, said the Caprice was parked on a side street.
Malvo also told Blumberg that Muhammad had planned to shoot "three to five children" outside Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, where 13-year-old Iran Brown was shot, and that Muhammad had checked out three schools as possible targets.
Malvo said that he and Muhammad camped out in the woods near Tasker the night before the shooting. He said they also slept in the Aspen Hill woods, near where Conrad E. Johnson, the final sniper victim, was shot, Blumberg testified. Malvo said Muhammad informed him that morning that Malvo would be taking his first shot that day, Blumberg said.
Blumberg stood firm on his diagnosis of Malvo in the face of withering cross-examination by Fairfax Commonwealth's Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr. Horan asked whether Malvo suffered from dissociative disorder when he provided his new version of the killings. Blumberg said yes.
"So based on your definition, he is insane when he's talking to you?" Horan asked. Blumberg said Malvo was still suffering from the disorder, which he described as a psychological numbness and a loss of identity.
"Can you be a little bit dissociative?" Horan asked after Blumberg told him that the disorder developed "on a continuum." Blumberg said one could have symptoms and not have the disorder.
Horan also repeatedly asked Blumberg whether he challenged Malvo on his different versions of the killings. "Is that your style, just accept his version without further probing?" Horan asked.
"I didn't just accept it," Blumberg responded, "but I didn't want to confront him and say, 'You're a liar.' He had told me he had claimed responsibility [earlier]. . . . I wanted to get his version. . . . The bottom line is, I didn't challenge him."
Blumberg testified, as mental health experts Dewey G. Cornell and Diane H. Schetky did earlier in the week, that Malvo volunteered the information that he killed Johnson on Oct. 22, 2002, and Keenya Cook in Tacoma, Wash., in February 2002.
Blumberg said Malvo told him that he had taken responsibility for all the shootings because he wanted to protect his "father," Muhammad. Cornell and Schetky had testified that Malvo told them the same thing.
Muhammad went on trial first, in Virginia Beach, for the slaying of Dean H. Meyers. A jury convicted him last month and sentenced him to death.
Malvo told Blumberg that he was driving the battered 1990 Caprice the morning of Oct. 3, 2002, and that Muhammad was in the trunk. Malvo described seeing a man, James L. "Sonny" Buchanan, "cutting grass at a car lot," and driving past at 10 mph.
"He saw Mr. Buchanan grab his chest. He then ran and dropped," Blumberg said. Witnesses testified that Buchanan did stagger away from his lawn mower and into the rear lot of Fitzgerald Auto Mall in White Flint, where he collapsed.
Malvo said that he drove to a stoplight and that Muhammad moved behind the wheel, while Malvo then broke down the Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle. This was the first time at Malvo's trial that anyone has claimed that Malvo was behind the wheel of the Caprice, and there is no indication that the teenager, a native of Jamaica, had any driving experience. A Fairfax police officer testified at Muhammad's trial that she saw Malvo driving the Caprice after the Franklin shooting.
Malvo told Blumberg that he was in the passenger seat for three other shootings that morning in Montgomery County, facing forward, checking the car's mirrors and making sure "the coast was clear" while Muhammad lay in the trunk. Blumberg said Malvo told him they moved into the District that night "to create a sense of havoc in the community as part of Mr. Muhammad's plan to extort money from the government." The snipers later left a note, which a handwriting expert said was written by Malvo, demanding $10 million to end the shootings.
Blumberg said Muhammad had picked out more than 100 possible shooting locations in the Washington region to "keep the authorities not knowing where the next shooting was going to occur."
Malvo told Blumberg that he and Muhammad arrived at Seven Corners about 21/2 hours before Franklin was shot. They ate and parked, then waited, with Muhammad in the trunk and Malvo perched on an incline above the car, apparently using binoculars and a walkie-talkie.
Malvo told Blumberg that he radioed to Muhammad when no one was around, "Mobile One, you have a go." Cornell testified earlier that Malvo said, "Sac One, you have a go." Neither expert explained the code.
Horan asked Blumberg why Malvo told two Baltimore jail guards that his "father" had committed a killing in Alabama if Malvo was protecting Muhammad. "He said he didn't think the correctional officers there would be credible witnesses," Blumberg said.
Horan asked Blumberg whether Malvo knew it was illegal to shoot people, since Blumberg earlier testified that Malvo did not know right from wrong at the time of the shootings. "Clearly he knew it was illegal," Blumberg said. Horan returned to the question several more times.
After Blumberg said Malvo could not resist the impulse to commit the crimes, Horan pressed Blumberg on whether Malvo was truly acting on an "irresistible impulse."
"If you plan something in advance, you can't be suffering from an irresistible impulse to do it?" Horan asked.
"That's why I'm not a lawyer," Blumberg replied.
The defense is ready to rest its case, and Horan then plans to present a mental health expert of his own, psychologist Stanton E. Samenow. Defense lawyers asked for time to prepare for Samenow's testimony -- they received his report about Malvo only Wednesday -- and Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Jane Marum Roush then gave both sides Friday off.
Also Thursday, one of the 16 jurors was excused. The 22-year-old sales representative told the judge he had misunderstood a question during jury selection about whether he had lived in Chesapeake for six months. He moved to neighboring Suffolk in June. Roush accepted responsibility for the confusion. Three alternates remain.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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