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Defense that D.C. sniper has?
Topic Started: May 15 2006, 05:50 AM (156 Views)
TheObserver

Quote:
 
ROCKVILLE, Md. - John Allen Muhammad hid his defense strategy from his former attorneys, holding it so close that he fired them rather than reveal how he planned to prove his self-professed innocence in six Washington-area sniper killings.

Two weeks into his second trial in the October 2002 killings, Muhammad has yet to put on his defense. But some of his plan has trickled out through statements in court and cross-examination of witnesses.

Muhammad, who is now representing himself, is trying to poke holes of doubt for jurors in the established narrative that he and accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo roamed the region for three weeks, killing 10 people and wounding three. Because no one saw him, he implies, there is no hard evidence he was the sniper.

“Does our law condemn a person first, before we have heard and known what he’s been doing?” Muhammad asked during his opening statement, quoting Nicodemus from the Bible. “The word ’knowing’ implies having direct knowledge of the subject at hand, direct seeing of what was going on.”

Muhammad, 45, is charged with six deaths in Montgomery County. He is already on death row in Virginia for another sniper killing. This second trial, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, is billed as insurance in case his Virginia conviction is ever thrown out.

Raising doubt among jurors
Muhammad has asked many witnesses whether they saw the shooter or have “direct knowledge” about the culprit. All said no. To counter reports of he and his Chevrolet Caprice near shooting sites, he questions whether witnesses’ memories were swayed by media coverage after his arrest.

He also challenges medical examiners, trying to get them to concede that a handgun, not the high-powered Bushmaster rifle police found in the Caprice, could be the weapon. And Muhammad mentions white vans, playing on authorities’ initial belief that the killers were in a van or box truck.

Yet Muhammad faces some seemingly insurmountable legal challenges. Prosecutors have forensic evidence that most of the .223-caliber bullets used came from the Bushmaster. Muhammad’s DNA was found on the gun. Jurors are expected to see the car, which was rigged with a hole in the trunk where a shooter could fire undetected.

“You’ve got a guy in possession of the weapon, which is pretty damning evidence,” said Paul Ebert, Prince William County commonwealth’s attorney, who prosecuted Muhammad in Virginia. “The fact nobody saw him do it, that’s pretty typical of murders.”

Muhammad also wants Malvo, whom he still calls his “son,” to testify in his defense. But Malvo is expected to plead guilty to the same six killings and testify against him.

Mounting his own defense
Judge James Ryan allowed Muhammad in March to remove his two court-appointed attorneys. According to two psychiatrist reports filed by those public defenders, Muhammad refused to share any information about his plans with them, saying they were secret. Both psychiatrists diagnosed mental illness.

He also defended himself in his first trial in Virginia. He gave an opening statement and questioned a few witnesses, but he gave the case back to his attorneys because he had a toothache. In Maryland, he has three standby attorneys who provide legal advice and sit with him at the defense table, but who are not allowed to address the court.

Muhammad wears stylish suits borrowed from one of the attorneys, totes legal texts and documents to court and listens attentively to testimony. He is polite and appears unfazed by the testimony of victims’ relatives and survivors.

He pushes police officers on the stand, trying to expose discrepancies in reports they wrote that could undercut their credibility. Perhaps wisely, he hasn’t questioned victims who survived sniper shootings. He objects to gory crime-scene testimony that could sway jurors.

But he also badgers some witnesses with repeated questions about police reports, statements and autopsies. His objections and motions are usually overruled.

Inescapable notoriety
Perhaps the biggest hurdle he faces is his notoriety — most of the jurors said during the jury selection they believed he was guilty, as do witnesses who come before him.

“He’s fishing, and he doesn’t have a clue,” said Steven Bailey, a Prince William County police officer who testified about his brief conversation with Muhammad after the Oct. 9, 2002, killing of Dean Meyers in Manassas, Va.

Other witnesses say Muhammad confuses them. Muhammad asked Troy Mason, a police cadet who found a shell casing near the Oct. 7 shooting of a middle school student, whether he would recognize a rifle like the Bushmaster if he saw it on the ground. Mason said the question didn’t make sense.

“I don’t understand the shenanigans of his doing the things he is doing,” Mason said after his testimony.


When this was going on, my area was one of the ones being targeted and it was some scary shit, I don't know why they are playing around with this asshole, give him the death penalty, it's not very hard, though I think they don't have that where his trial is being held which is plain b.s.
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Nubochanozep
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Is it absolutely guaranteed that he did it? No, therefore no the death penalty should not apply.

I'm not against it for murder (I don't support it under any lesser crime such as rape etc.), however it should only be applied when it is 100% confirmed that the suspect did it.
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TheObserver

Everyone, well almost everyone know that it was him Neb.
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TheObserver

Here's more.

Quote:
 
John Allen Muhammad strides into the Montgomery County courtroom looking every bit the lawyer. Gone is the orange jumpsuit he wore in Virginia when he was sentenced to death. Gone, too, is the hair that towered over him as he prepared for trial in Maryland.

He now wears suits and ties. He carries with him a stack of legal papers, shuffling them purposefully at the defense table. He speaks the language of law, begging the "court's indulgence" and asking that a "continuous objection" be noted for the record.

Although lawyers and other observers say a conviction is a near certainty, Muhammad's trial is providing fresh and sometimes surprising glimpses into the man accused in the 2002 sniper rampage that instilled fear across the region. Because he is acting as his own attorney, the trial, now in its third week in Rockville, has showcased Muhammad's personality and demeanor to a degree that his Virginia trial did not.

"You'd think he'd be rambling and off the wall," said Matthew E. Bennett, a Rockville lawyer who, after observing Muhammad in the courtroom, rated his performance "above average for a layperson."

The outlines of a strategy for sowing reasonable doubt have begun to emerge: Emphasize that witnesses did not see him shoot anyone, suggest that victims' injuries could have been caused by a gun other than his, and raise the possibility that repeated sightings of white box trucks could point to culprits still at large.

Muhammad's approach to fighting murder charges in the six slayings in Montgomery resembles the approach his attorneys took in Virginia, where he lost. And it might not overcome the strong ballistics and other scientific evidence that prosecutors promised in their opening statement.

Polite, articulate
In the jury's presence, Muhammad has said nothing of the elaborate conspiracy theory attributed to him by a psychiatrist: that he was framed because he knew of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's secret role in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He is not recognizable as the man that the psychiatrist, hired by his former attorney, diagnosed as "clearly psychotic, delusional, paranoid and incompetent to assist his attorneys, much less represent himself."

Instead, standing behind the defense table, Muhammad the trial advocate addresses witnesses as "sir" or "ma'am." At times, he laughs appropriately. Other times, he relishes catching witnesses in minor contradictions. He speaks softly, mumbles and sometimes stumbles over his words.

"Ma'am," he said last week to a prosecution witness, "are you, uh, trained in terminal ballistics?"

"I've received some training in ballistics . . ."

"Ma'am, yes or no," he interrupted, in true lawyerly fashion. "Are you trained in terminal ballistics?"

Although he has a high school education and no formal legal training, Muhammad was ready with a response on another occasion last week when prosecutors said he was trying to introduce a report improperly. "Your honor, I'll establish a foundation," he volunteered.

After dropping in one day last week, Philip Collins, a lawyer in Bethesda, said: "He's probably got more trial experience than a lot of second- and third-year attorneys."

Another spectator, claims adjuster Eric Ferebee, said that he has been cross-examined by less competent lawyers. "I think he got a great tutorial in the Virginia trial," Ferebee said. "He's ready. He's prepared. I hate to give the guy accolades, but you know. . ."

'Like a regular lawyer'
Even Roger Polk, a prosecution witness who testified that he saw Muhammad's car near a Bowie middle school where the youngest sniper victim was shot Oct. 7, said he had to concede that Muhammad "looked like a regular lawyer to me."

Muhammad, 45, has -- wisely, many lawyers say -- generally declined to cross-examine witnesses who were wounded or whose family members were killed.

He has not visibly reacted to gruesome pictures of sniper victims or to recordings of emotional 911 calls. He has made frequent unsettling references to a "lead snowstorm," a term of art that describes the pattern of damage caused when a high-velocity round fragments inside the body.

Montgomery Circuit Court Judge James L. Ryan allowed Muhammad -- who represented himself for two days in the Virginia trial -- to fire his public defenders more than a month ago. Three private attorneys are acting as standby counsel, permitted to advise Muhammad and help him prepare but not speak for him in court or to the media.

In one typical exchange highlighting his defense, Muhammad last week questioned Mary Ripple, the Maryland deputy chief medical examiner, about drawing inferences from photographs of the victims' injuries.

"Is there anything you can point to that can tell us who specifically shot these people?"

"No."

"Is there anything that you can point to in those pictures that can tell us who has something to do with shooting these people?"

"No."

And he pressed her to admit that the victims' injuries could have been caused by any number of weapons, not just the .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle found in his aging Chevrolet Caprice when he and alleged accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo were arrested at a rest stop in Frederick on Oct. 24, 2002.

The Malvo question
Lawyers not in the case said Muhammad's apparent defense strategy could unravel if Malvo, who is sentenced to life in Virginia, pleads guilty in Maryland and agrees to cooperate with prosecutors. Malvo, they noted, is the only person in a position to know as much as Muhammad does about the pair's activities during those 22 days in October. If Muhammad questions him carelessly, Malvo could say things that the jury might never otherwise hear. "He's going to be potentially opening some very wide doors," lawyer Robert C. Bonsib said.

Yet Muhammad at times has shown himself to be an able interrogator, at least once confronting a witness with a previous statement and forcing him to admit error. That witness was Steven Bailey, a Prince William County police officer who testified that he had seen Muhammad in his vehicle at the scene of a shooting at a Manassas gas station.

Bailey said he believed the driver of the Caprice was between 40 and 45 years old.

"Forty to 45, is that what you're saying?" Muhammad asked, before presenting Bailey with the report.

"Can you tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury what was the age of the person you said you had saw?"

"Forty-five to 50," Bailey said.

"I'm sorry, I didn't . . . "

"What I wrote down was 45 to 50," Bailey repeated.

"So you didn't write down 40 to 45."

At a trial that has included many reminders of the deadly sniper toll, Muhammad has occasionally used wit -- as many lawyers do -- to drive home a point. One such instance occurred at a hearing in March, when his public defenders argued that he had a "brain dysfunction" and was incompetent to act as his own attorney.

"Your honor, can I sit over there with them?" he blurted out, looking at the prosecution table.

Last week, Muhammad drew scattered laughter while cross-examining a D.C. police officer, Henry Gallagher, who described one of the numerous encounters in which Muhammad is alleged to have barely eluded capture. Gallagher said he pulled Muhammad over on Oct. 3, not far from where Pascal Charlot was shot later that evening, but issued him only a verbal warning for speeding and going through two stop signs.

"Sir, let me ask you something," Muhammad said. "What does it take to get a traffic citation in the nation's capital?"


Sounds intense.
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Cerebral Assassin

Of course HE did it. And why is he even still breathing? He should have been executed a long time ago. Typical judicial bullshit.
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Nubochanozep
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Did he do it?

No-one can be certain, that's why I pray nightly that people like you, Cerebral assasin never gain a place in the law. If you did, you would be a cancer to the society in which foward thinking and liberal members of the law, and indeed the greater public have built. It's not "typical judicial bullshit", it's ensuring the right to a fair trial and ensuring that no-one gets wrongly executed, which by the way happens all the time in the US and around the globe (apart from in countries where the murder penalty is banned).

Alas, there are still major barriers in building the best and fairest society. These include the legalisation of homosexual marriage, legalisation of euthanasia, legalisation of marijuana and the criminilisation of the death penalty. I have no qualms in suggesting that you're against all of those issues of paramount importance...

Getting back to the more important matters, he's certainly proving himself to be quite the intelligent man. This does bring up the issue that if he is found guilty...again, then he could very well be slapped with the unconstitutional state sponsored killing penalty with even more ferocity than before as he's proven himself to be of intelligence. I believe the courts frequently look down more upon intelligent killers than unintelligent killers. I've never fully understood why that is.
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Madness420
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The defense he is using is far better than no defense at all. Although it probably won't work for him I have to agree that the major problem with the death penalty is that in most cases you can't be 100% certain.
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Jimmy
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Past 6SW moderator
Kill the asshole. Snipers are scary shit.
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Nubochanozep
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Let us kill he who we think has done something wrong!

As a religious man Jimmy, you've completely went against the word of the Holy Bible.
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Cerebral Assassin

Uh, Neb? Most psychos ARE intelligent. Now I'm not saying that all intelligent people are crazy, but it is a fact that most whackos are very smart. And if you took a life, you should be prepared to give your own. That's called common sense.

Muhammad's DNA was found on the Bushmaster gun that was in HIS vehicle....a vehicle that just so happened to have been parked near the areas of the shootings. The car, which was rigged with a hole in the trunk where a shooter could fire undetected, is yet more evidence against him.

The beauty of our technology is that you don't have to SEE someone kill in order for them to be guilty. Ever hear of forensics? Ever hear of DNA matching? Add the facts, and then see that this fuck deserves to die.

I pray that one sided, tunnel vision people such as yourself never get into power, because that would be the blind leading the blind.
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TheObserver

Guilty! :ohyeah:


Quote:
 
ROCKVILLE, Md. - Washington-area sniper John Allen Muhammad was convicted of six more of the killings Tuesday after a trial in which he acted as his own attorney and the prosecution's star witness was his young protege and partner in crime.

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

The jury took slightly more than four hours to convict him after a four-week trial.

As the verdict was read, Muhammad sat grim-faced, his arms folded across 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.

The trial marked the first time Lee Boyd Malvo testified against the man prosecutors say was his mentor and manipulator. 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 planned two phases of attacks _ 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.

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 slayings that targeted people as they went shopping, gassed up their cars and mowed lawns near the nation's capital.

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.

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.

Aside from Malvo's testimony, Muhammad's second trial followed much of the same blueprint as his first, with prosecutors telling jurors that Muhammad and Malvo roamed the area in a beat-up Chevrolet Caprice, firing .223-caliber bullets through a hole bored in its trunk.

The jury heard a torrent of evidence that linked Muhammad to the shootings _ fingerprints, DNA evidence, and ballistics tests that connected the bullets used in the shootings to the Bushmaster rifle found in the car when Muhammad and Malvo were arrested.

Acting as his own lawyer, Muhammad claimed he and Malvo were simply roaming the Washington region looking for his children who had been taken away from him in a custody battle with his ex-wife. He implied that authorities framed him, planting items such as DNA and gun evidence to convict him.

In an often testy four-hour cross-examination, Muhammad continued to refer to Malvo as his "son" even though the younger man tried to show during his testimony that he was no longer under the sway of his one-time father figure.

Malvo, who received no leniency in return for his testimony, told jurors he wanted to face the man who he said trained him to be a killer and coerced him to join his murderous schemes. Malvo called Muhammad a "coward" and said the older man had turned him into "a monster."

Malvo told jurors that he shot three of the 13 sniper victims, while Muhammad pulled the trigger on the rest. He said Muhammad was the shooter in all but one of the six Maryland murders.

In March, Muhammad persuaded Circuit Judge James Ryan to let him defend himself, despite statements from two psychiatrists who said he may be mentally ill.

During closing arguments, Muhammad grew wild-eyed and sometimes shouted as he quoted the Bible, Mark Twain and Groucho Marx.

He struggled to mount a defense, hampered by his failure to meet deadlines on calling witnesses. He originally wanted to call hundreds of people to the stand, but the judge limited him to just a few dozen because he failed to follow proper courtroom procedure.

Many witnesses did not want to take part in his defense, refusing to show up at court even though they were issued subpoenas by lawyers helping Muhammad with his case.

In Maryland, Muhammad was charged with first-degree murder for the deaths in Montgomery County of James Martin, Premkumar Walekar, James "Sonny" Buchanan, Sarah Ramos, Lori Lewis Rivera and Conrad Johnson.

Maryland prosecutors originally sought a death sentence, but dropped those plans earlier this year. Muhammad's Virginia defense attorneys and some victims questioned whether it was necessary to reopen old psychological wounds from more than three years ago.

Muhammad could still face prosecution for earlier shootings in Alabama and Louisiana. He and Malvo are linked to other shootings in Maryland, Arizona, Georgia and Washington state.
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Nubochanozep
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Let us dance, someone will die!

(douchebag)
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