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Found guilty of capital murder Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1071789010566&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1071789010566&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154
Dec. 19, 2003. 06:28 AM
Beltway sniper found guilty of capital murder
Lee Boyd Malvo could face death
Teenager took part in killing spree
ROSIE DIMANNO
TORONTO STAR
Guilty by his own hand — on the murder weapon.
Guilty by his own voice — on the confession tapes.
Guilty by his own prediction — "You want to hang me, okay, poke me, shock me, just gonna last for three minutes, five minutes, two minutes, then you're dead.''
Lee Boyd Malvo called it, more than a year ago. A Virginia jury yesterday pronounced it: Guilty on two counts of capital murder in the Oct. 14, 2002, killing of FBI analyst Linda Franklin, half her head blown off as she stood behind her car outside a Home Depot, her horrified husband mere feet away.
It took just 13 hours of deliberation over two days for the jury — eight women, four men — to reach its verdict, a verdict that was surely anticipated by everyone who heard the testimony presented in the Chesapeake courtroom, and even by the lawyers who had presented an insanity defence as the teenager's only faint hope to dodge his sins.
Malvo sat without apparent reaction.
"We are extremely pleased with the verdict," said Bob Meyers, the brother of another of the pair's victims, Dean Meyers, Reuters reported. Malvo was found guilty of participating in the murder of Meyers. In the second count, Malvo was found guilty of killing Franklin as an act of terrorism.
The junior member of the Beltway Sniper tandem that terrorized the Washington area last year is only 18 years old, 17 when he and homicidal mentor John Allen Muhammad killed 13 people, random targets, during a three-week shooting spree that spawned the largest manhunt in U.S. history.
Malvo's youth and his appalling personal history as an abandoned, neglected child, groomed and murderously exploited by Muhammad, may yet induce a degree of mercy from the jury.
Muhammad was similarly convicted last month in a separate trial, the jury recommending execution.
The sentencing phase of the trial will begin this morning to determine whether Malvo should be condemned to death or life in prison without parole.
Realistically, it was this weighty decision to which Malvo's defence team had tapered their case, calling a slew of witnesses from Jamaica, where the defendant was born and largely raised, much of the time left alone by a witch of a mother, all reinforcing the image of the teenager as a docile, obedient boy, desperate for a father figure, with no history of violence or evil, tragically ripe for brainwashing by Muhammad.
Lead defence attorney Craig Cooley is a tireless opponent of the death penalty with an impressive record to match: 60 capital murder cases, only 30 of which proceeded to trial, just two ultimately landing on death row.
He will continue to hammer on the issues the defence stressed throughout — that Malvo was a fatally impressionable, lonely, submissive juvenile, so thoroughly indoctrinated by Muhammad that he could no longer tell right from wrong.
As a defence strategy on the matter of guilt, it was a wobbly tactic; the legal definition of insanity is quite narrow and, clearly, the jury was unconvinced by mental health testimony.
But while a unanimous decision was required for the guilty verdict, just one merciful jurist among 12 would be sufficient to spare Malvo's life.
Prosecutor Robert Horan will argue that these crimes were so despicable they demand execution.
Additional articles by Rosie DiManno
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