Teenager's Role Tangles Case Against Older Sniper Suspect

CENTREVILLE, Va., Dec. 19 — In the nearly two months since the sniper attacks in the Washington area ended with the arrests of John Muhammad and his teenage protégé Lee Malvo, investigators say they have made one striking conclusion: All the evidence they have points to Mr. Malvo as the triggerman. Little if any indicates Mr. Muhammad fired a shot.

Some officials who have reviewed the evidence at the sniper task force's new headquarters here in suburban Virginia say that the lack of evidence against Mr. Muhammad will complicate prosecutors' efforts to get a death sentence for him in the shooting of Dean Harold Meyers, who was killed at a gas station in Manassas on Oct. 9.

After the two men were arrested on Oct. 24, it was widely assumed, even by some investigators, that Mr. Muhammad fired most of the shots, which hit their targets with remarkable accuracy. He was a former Army infantryman, 24 years Mr. Malvo's senior.

The reversal in assumptions is only the latest that has occurred since the long, terrifying weeks of the attacks. Investigators said they were looking for a white van; the men were found in a 1990 blue Chevrolet Caprice. Experts said the assailant would probably turn out to be a white gunman; Mr. Muhammad and Mr. Malvo are black. Since the attacker outfoxed so many investigators and attacked with such cool precision, it was assumed that Mr. Muhammad, an experienced marksman, was the primary killer. Now, investigators say, it appears that a teenager is to blame.

"Nothing is what it seems in this case," said the state's attorney, Douglas F. Gansler, the chief prosecutor in Montgomery County, Md., where six of the shootings occurred.

The Justice Department arranged to have the two men tried first in Virginia — rather than in Maryland or the District of Columbia, where the other shootings occurred — largely because death sentences could be obtained more easily against both there. A Virginia law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks makes a death sentence possible for those convicted of ordering terrorist killings, even if they did not actually commit them. That law is untested, however, and if Mr. Muhammad is convicted solely under it, any death sentence is likely to face a wide range of appeals.

But to obtain a conviction under Virginia's traditional capital murder law, which requires proof that the defendant pulled the trigger, prosecutors in Prince William County would have to show that Mr. Muhammad fired the sole shot that killed Mr. Meyers, even though the only evidence points to Mr. Malvo.

¶His own admissions to both Virginia shootings in which the men are being tried and to one in Maryland, made in conversations with Fairfax police detectives.

¶Hair linked by DNA to Mr. Malvo found in the trunk of the Caprice. A hole was carved in the trunk to create a sniper's nest.

¶A videotape recovered from a security camera near the Home Depot parking garage in Falls Church, Va., where Linda Franklin , an F.B.I. analyst, was killed on Oct 14. The videotape shows someone who appears to be Mr. Muhammad inside the driver's seat of the car.

¶Mr. Malvo's fingerprints found on a piece of paper near where investigators believe the shot was fired that wounded Iran Brown, 13, outside Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, Md., on Oct. 7.

¶Saliva found on a grape stem on the hill where investigators contend someone fired the shot that killed Conrad E. Johnson, a bus driver, in Aspen Hill, Md., on Oct 22.

"There is not much pointing to Muhammad, and that is going to make it really hard to show that he was the triggerman," said one senior law enforcement official who is involved in the case. "There are other ways to attempt to obtain a death sentence, but this lack of evidence has been one of the most perplexing things about the case."

The law enforcement official added, "Not being able to seek the death penalty under both statutes would increase the likelihood that his lawyers could get a conviction overturned on appeal."

The evidence in each case adds up to different ways to approach the prosecution. To prove that Mr. Malvo is a candidate for the death penalty in the shooting of Ms. Franklin, Fairfax County prosecutors could argue that, despite his youth, there is evidence that he was the major participant in the shootings. Unlike Maryland and the District of Columbia, Virginia allows for the death penalty in murders committed by juveniles.

With little evidence directly tying Mr. Muhammad to the shooting with which he is charged, Prince William County prosecutors could, under the antiterror law, paint him as the mastermind, a criminal Svengali.

Prosecutors say that while as a matter of law it is permissible to argue competing theories about the same crimes in different courtrooms, it might not be wholly ethical.

"The defense can argue competing theories," said James A. Willet, a prosecutor in the case against Mr. Muhammad. "Our job is to make sure that justice is done, so we can't and don't want to go to one jurisdiction and say Muhammad was the shooter and another jurisdiction and say that Mr. Malvo was the shooter."

Mr. Willet also called the antiterrorism law "some unexplored water" but said he was confident it would stand up on appeal.

Those close to both men's defense teams said their lawyers would most likely use any contradicting theories to try to weaken the government's cases.

"We are going to work hard to force them to be consistent," said one person close to Mr. Muhammad's legal team.

Investigators discussed the evidence to counter public perceptions that Mr. Malvo was under the spell of Mr. Muhammad Still, some investigators say that several acquaintances of Mr. Muhammad's say he had been training Mr. Malvo to fire a rifle for more than a year before the sniper attacks started, and saw himself as a master who was preparing his protégé. Mr. Muhammad trained Mr. Malvo in karate when they lived in Washington State and traveled together to the Arizona desert last spring, investigators say. In Tacoma, Mr. Muhammad gave Mr. Malvo the nickname Sniper, acquaintances say, and practiced rifle shooting with him in the backyard of a friend's house.

That so much evidence would point to Mr. Malvo does not surprise some investigators who in the early hours after the arrests in Maryland had already begun to conclude that Mr. Malvo was the primary shooter. Investigators and prosecutors in Maryland arrived at that theory, one not widely circulated, after seeing that the Caprice's trunk had been turned into a sniper's nest that Mr. Malvo, but not Mr. Muhammad, could fit into. Mr. Malvo is 5 feet 5 inches tall, and Mr. Muhammad is 6-foot-1.

"This suggested Malvo had fired the shots that came from the car," said an investigator who was involved in early evidence collection.

One law enforcement official said that investigators strongly believe that Linda Franklin and Iran Brown were hit from the Caprice.

By the end of the day of the arrests, investigators concluded that only Mr. Malvo's fingerprints were found on the Bushmaster rifle and bipod that the police say was found in the car's trunk. The rifle has since been linked to most of the Washington-area shootings.

One thing that has complicated prosecutors' efforts in the Muhammad case has been admissions Mr. Malvo made to detectives in Fairfax County on the day he was transferred to Virginia from Maryland on orders of Attorney General John Ashcroft. In a seven-hour interrogation, Mr. Malvo told detectives that the shootings were well planned and involved scouting missions, two law enforcement officials said.

Mr. Malvo told the detectives that the men used two-way radios to look out for the police. The investigators said that Mr. Malvo would not discuss Mr. Muhammad's role in any detail but took responsibility for the shooting of the teenager and the killings of Ms. Franklin and Mr. Meyers.

As both cases roll toward trial, investigators here at the sniper task force's new command center in this suburban office complex are scrambling, particularly for more physical evidence that links Mr. Muhammad to the shootings.

In the hunt for the snipers, the task force had more than 1,200 investigators at its disposal, and now a team of about 50 detectives will be following leads for the next six months to a year here in Centreville.

"They are continuing to chart and investigate the activities of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo," said Lucille Bower, a task force spokeswoman. "That will take a lot of work, and there will continue to be new revelations."

Douglas M. Duncan, the chief executive of Montgomery County, said that people are prepared for more surprises in the case.

"The pseudo-profilers were totally wrong on this, and people after it was all over were sort of laughing at how they were not even close," Mr. Duncan said.

"When you add it on top of the Sept. 11 attacks and the anthrax attacks," he said, "we live in a different world and people are ready for anything. If you talk about surprise or shock, it is this 17-year-old kid running around shooting people. That's sick."

With little evidence directly tying Mr. Muhammad to the shooting with which he is charged, Prince William County prosecutors could, under the antiterror law, paint him as the mastermind, a criminal Svengali.

Well, it's an outside shot, but go for it.

Mr. Malvo told the detectives that the men used two-way radios to look out for the police.

A videotape recovered from a security camera near the Home Depot parking garage in Falls Church, Va., where Linda Franklin , an F.B.I. analyst, was killed on Oct 14. The videotape shows someone who appears to be Mr. Muhammad inside the driver's seat of the car.

There is something seriously wrong with a system in which the death of fetus or an old person is viewed as a public good while the execution of an unrepentant, multiple murderer is considered an evil to be avoided at all costs. It's an absurdity which can't be adequately explained by philosophical, religious or even cultural reversals of the age.

It may have less to do with ideology than with the fact that the unborn and the very old are essentially voiceless, feeble and unable to hire lawyers. On the other hand, Muhammed, Malvo and their ilk are bursting with an evil kind of vitality, and are well able to lobby, plead and cajole. There is no shortage of fools willing to believe them.

A society is very often measured by how well it treats the truly helpless and how strongly it restrains the predatory. On that score, liberalism has failed miserably, and for the most infamous of reasons: not for a lack of brains, but from a surfeit of cowardice.

The Justice Department arranged to have the two men tried first in Virginia – rather than in Maryland or the District of Columbia, where the other shootings occurred – largely because death sentences could be obtained more easily against both there. A Virginia law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks makes a death sentence possible for those convicted of ordering terrorist killings, even if they did not actually commit them. That law is untested, however, and if Mr. Muhammad is convicted solely under it, any death sentence is likely to face a wide range of appeals.
But to obtain a conviction under Virginia's traditional capital murder law, which requires proof that the defendant pulled the trigger, prosecutors in Manassas would have to show that Mr. Muhammad fired the sole shot that killed Mr. Meyers, even though the only evidence points to Mr. Malvo.

Well, then, it will be up to 12 good Virginia citizens to do the right thing....

Obvious attempt to shield Muhammad. They probably agreed on this before the killings ever started. Because, they thought, Malvo's youth would protect him from the death penalty, they decided to do everything to use a lack of evidence to protect Muhammad from it.

Article doesn't mention the other jurisdictions in the wings where the pair committed murders: AL, GA, LA, AZ. Do they all restrict the death penalty to the people who pull the trigger?

What about the murder in Tacoma of the daughter of Muhammad's business partner -- the young lady who answered the door and was shot in the face? Seems to me that Muhhad's friend said that he had loaned the gun to Muhhamad. Was malvo even in the country at that time?

Oh yea, Malvo was here all right. The pair was out shoplifting together 4 days earlier

February 12 2002 - Tacoma - Muhammad is arrested for grocery store shoplifting, released on $900 bail, and is ordered to return March 06. Chris Brannan, who handled security for Argus Service Corp. that day saw Muhammad and Malvo putting items into a backpack. When she stopped him, he swore. "He called me names." she says. "He told Malvo to shut up and not say a word. He just said I'm not talking to you. I don't need to tell you nothing, you can't prove a damn thing."

And as for Isa Nichols, I think the press tiptoes around her 'business' relationship with Muhammad. Remember how Muhammad used to fix women's cars in return for sex? Well several of the Nichols women say he fixed their cars. Also, Isa hadn't worked with Muhammad for a long time (years?) but she still had a relationship because she knew of his whereabouts when NO ONE ELSE did. After Kenya was murdered, police questioned Isa and her husband about any affairs either might have had. They said none, but refused to take lie detector tests.

Thanks for your careful research. But what about "accessory to a crime." Texas used to give the death penalty for that. What about these other states? Surely the fact that Muhhamad provided the means and the training to the kid should count for something!

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