Muhammad found guilty in second sniper trial

updated 9:37 p.m. ET May 30, 2006

ROCKVILLE, Md. - John Allen Muhammad was convicted of six of the Washington-area sniper killings Tuesday after the prosecution’s star witness, Muhammad’s young protégé, portrayed him as the mastermind of an audacious terror scheme in which phase two would have been bombings against children.

Muhammad, 45, is already under a death sentence in Virginia for a killing there. The most he can get for the six murders committed in Maryland is life in prison without parole.

The jury took slightly more than four hours to convict him after a four-week trial in which he acted as his own attorney.

As the verdict was read, Muhammad stood grim-faced, his arms folded across his chest. He was led out of the courtroom, pausing to ask the judge, “Your honor, may I speak?”

The judge answered, “No, sir,” and Muhammad was taken away.

‘For the sheer terror of it’
Ten people in all were killed and three were wounded in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., in the string of shootings that gripped the metropolitan area with fear in 2002.

The trial marked the first time Lee Boyd Malvo testified against the man prosecutors say was his mentor and manipulator. And Muhammad’s cross-examination of Malvo marked one of the most dramatic moments.

During two days of testimony last week, Malvo, 21, gave the first inside account of the shootings and described Muhammad’s elaborate plans for a reign of terror.

According to Malvo, Muhammad had a two-phase plan — six shootings a day for a month, followed by a wave of bombings of schools, school buses and children’s hospitals. Malvo said that when he asked Muhammad why, the older man replied: “For the sheer terror of it — the worst thing you can do to people is aim at their children.”

Muhammad hoped to extort $10 million from authorities and use the money to set up a school in Canada to teach homeless children how to use guns and explosives and use violence to shut down other cities, Malvo said.

Defense lawyers not surprised by verdict
One of the attorneys who helped Muhammad with his defense said he was disappointed but not surprised by the verdict. Muhammad was blocked from presenting evidence he thought proved he was framed.

“When you give the jury only one side of the story, you can’t expect them to do anything other than what they have done,” said attorney Jai Bonner.

Juror Scott Stearns, the White House correspondent for Voice of America, said Malvo’s testimony was particularly compelling. He noted that Muhammad frequently ended his questioning of witnesses by asking if they had eyewitness knowledge of his guilt. That question was glaringly absent from Muhammad’s cross-examination of Malvo, he said.

Muhammad was occasionally able to point out small inconsistencies in the testimony of prosecution witnesses, but “did not successfully discredit the case the government built against him,” Stearns said.

Maryland prosecutors said they needed to put Muhammad on trial as insurance in case his conviction in Virginia was overturned. Some of the victims’ families had also sought a second trial, seeking an explanation for the random attacks on people as they went shopping, gassed up their cars and mowed lawns near the nation’s capital.

After the verdict, Vijay Walekar, brother of sniper victim Premkumar Walekar, said, “I wish they had the death penalty.” Walekar said of Muhammad: “He stands up and denies everything up there. It was hard for us to take it.”

Malvo’s testimony came after he agreed to plead guilty in the Maryland killings. He gave detailed descriptions of each shooting, even pointing out parking spaces where the sniper team’s car was parked.

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