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Malvo's prison term marks a broader trend away from capital punishment for juveniles. By Seth Stern | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor When a Virginia jury voted against a death sentence for Washington-area sniper John Lee Malvo this week, it followed a national trend away from sentencing juvenile offenders to death. The annual death-sentence rate for juvenile offenses has declined rapidly in recent years and death-penalty opponents say it's only a matter of time before capital punishment for those under 18 is eliminated. "The question is whether it will end by states passing laws banning it, the Supreme...

Posted on Wed, Dec. 24, 2003 Malvo spared the death penalty PROSECUTOR ATTRIBUTES JURY'S DECISION TO DEFENDANT'S YOUTHFUL APPEARANCE By Adam Liptak NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE CHESAPEAKE, Va. - A jury spared the life of Lee Boyd Malvo yesterday, instead sentencing him to life in prison without parole for murders and terrorism in the Washington-area sniper shootings last year. The sentence came just weeks after John Allen Muhammad, Malvo's mentor and partner in the sniper attacks, was also convicted of murder and terrorism and was sentenced to death. Malvo, 18, was 17 at the time of the crimes. The...

To be released soon

<p>CHESAPEAKE, Va. — A jury of eight women and four men convicted Lee Boyd Malvo of capital murder yesterday for his role in last year's Washington-area sniper killings — bringing the teenage defendant one step closer to a death sentence.</p>

<p>CHESAPEAKE, Va. — A jury of eight women and four men convicted Lee Boyd Malvo of capital murder yesterday for his role in last year's Washington-area sniper killings — bringing the teenage defendant one step closer to a death sentence.</p>

<p>CHESAPEAKE, Va.  — A woman who lost her father in the Washington-area sniper shootings (search) last year confronted teenage sniper Lee Boyd Malvo (search) from the stand Friday, calling him "evil" as she described the impact of her father's death.</p> <p>"Because of you, he didn't have a chance to see his great-grandchild. That's insane of you to do. You're evil," said Myrtha Cinada, daughter of Pascal Charlot, the fifth person killed in the shootings, who testified during the sentencing phase of Malvo's trial. Malvo was convicted of two counts of capital murder Thursday and the jury must now decide whether he should receive life in prison or death.</p>

Within the next 1/2 hour.

<p>CHESAPEAKE, Virginia (CNN) -- Teen sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo wrote letters to a fellow inmate this summer, coaching him on ways to fool authorities and encouraging him to look for opportunities to escape, prosecutors disclosed Monday.</p> <p>Prosecutors said the three undated letters were written this summer, at a time when defense attorneys claim Malvo, now 18, had broken free of the psychological grip of his alleged sniper partner, John Allen Muhammad.</p>

The Psychology of Junior Sniper Lee Malvo by Michael J. Hurd The defense psychiatrist for the D.C. sniper, Lee Malvo, claims that Malvo was unable to distinguish right from wrong. In other words, he didn't know that it was wrong to shoot innocent people at gas stations and department stores. Why not? Not because he was psychotic or schizophrenic, meaning completely out of touch with reality (in which case he would not have executed these shootings so competently). Instead, we're supposed to believe that he was so "pathologically loyal" to the elder sniper John Muhammad that he couldn't help but...

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (AP) -- Sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo has mental diseases that left him "psychologically numb" and legally insane because he couldn't tell right from wrong, a defense psychiatrist said. During the months he lived with convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad starting in 2000, Malvo lost his sense of identity and became vulnerable to Muhammad's wishes and "intense, coercive persuasion," psychiatrist Neil Blumberg testified Wednesday in Malvo's murder trial. Malvo's dissociative disorder that allowed him to tune out reality, his depression and a childhood "conduct disorder" of shoplifting and cat-killing all meant Malvo was "unable to distinguish between right...

Dec 10, 2003 Psychiatrists Testify Teen Sniper Suspect Malvo Could Not Tell Right From Wrong By Matthew Barakat Associated Press Writer CHESAPEAKE, Va. (AP) - Lee Boyd Malvo did not know right from wrong during last year's sniper spree because of intense indoctrination by sniper mastermind John Allen Muhammad, two defense psychiatrists testified Wednesday at Malvo's trial. "Lee was unable to distinguish between right and wrong and was unable to resist the impulse" to commit the sniper killings, said Neil Blumberg, who examined Malvo 20 times in jail. Psychiatrist Diane Schetky, who twice interviewed Malvo, also testified that Malvo, 17...

From the moment John Allen Muhammad and Lee Malvo were arrested in the Beltway-area sniper case last fall, the media and Muslim activists wanted us to believe that the serial killings had absolutely nothing to do with Islamic terrorism. CNN downplayed Muhammad's religious conversion — calling him by his old name, John Allen Williams, when his identity was first revealed. Malvo was cast as a clueless dupe with no true convictions. Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) argued: "There is no indication that this case is related to Islam or Muslims." Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper railed...

<p>Chesapeake, Va. — Teenage sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo was so despondent in the months before the Washington-area sniper spree that he tried to kill himself, a psychiatrist testified Tuesday. By the late summer of 2002, Malvo believed he would likely die because of the "mission" he and sniper mastermind John Allen Muhammad were about to launch, said Diane Schetky, a forensic psychiatrist who twice interviewed Malvo in jail.</p>

<p>CHESAPEAKE - When Linda Franklin was shot and killed last fall, Lee Boyd Malvo suffered from a "dissociative disorder," a "substantial impairment" that qualifies as a mental disease, a forensic psychologist told jurors during the teen's capital-murder trial yesterday.</p> <p>Dewey G. Cornell, a University of Virginia psychology professor who has testified at dozens of criminal trials, said Malvo "is, in my experience, a very unusual, rare case."</p>

CHESAPEAKE, Va. - Lee Boyd Malvo believed John Allen Muhammad would kill him if he ever deviated from the plan in last year's sniper spree, a psychologist testified Monday at Malvo's murder trial. Muhammad's two rules for the pair's mission were "whatever it takes" and "no turning back," said Dewey Cornell, a University of Virginia psychologist who interviewed Malvo more than 20 times after his arrest. Muhammad often told Malvo that Malvo should shoot and kill Muhammad if he ever strayed from the mission, Cornell said. Malvo assumed the same would happen to him if he deviated, according to the...

 Picture of the Day - LIX (see all)The Religion of Snipers While many news outlets are carrying the D.C. area sniper trial, they are desperately lacking in any real analysis of what these crimes really mean. Is this terrorism? Did religion -- namely Islam -- play a role in the killings? Is this connected to Osama's al Qaeda, even if only via ideology? And, is any of this related to the new shooting spree in Ohio? Yes, yes, yes and yes... and I have evidence to back my claims. What follows are official court documents from the Malvo case in...

CHESAPEAKE, Va. - Consumed with righting racial inequality and injustice, sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo became yesterday the latest young defendant to use the film The Matrix as part of an insanity defense to explain killings that seem to have no clear explanation. The 1999 film has been used, with some success, in at least three other murder cases in which young defendants attempted to justify their crimes with allusions to the movie's philosophy that the world people live in is only a dream sequence controlled by a computer. Violence is condoned as a way to get out of the...

<p>CHESAPEAKE, Virginia (CNN) -- Testimony resumed Friday in the sniper shooting trial of Lee Boyd Malvo a day after a social worker described how the defendant told her of creating a group of "super children" to combat racial injustice around the world.</p>

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (AP) - A former platoon sergeant was so unnerved by John Allen Muhammad, who was suspected of tossing a grenade into an Army tent in 1991, that he scribbled the soldier's name and dog-tag number on a piece of paper he still keeps in his wallet. "I considered him a threat," Kip Berentson, 48, said Wednesday of the sniper mastermind at the trial of Muhammad's alleged accomplice. No one was wounded in the 1991 grenade attack and no charges were brought. Lawyers for 18-year-old sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo are pursuing an insanity defense, contending Muhammad brainwashed the...

CHESAPEAKE, Va. -- A clinical psychologist who examined sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo this summer said Thursday that the teenager was unusually cheerful during the exam, which he classified as odd behavior. Malvo is accused of being the triggerman in the series of sniper shootings that left 10 people dead and terrorized the Washington area last fall. David Schretlen said he was immediately struck by Malvo's cheerfulness. He called it "out of step with the seriousness of the situation." Schretlin said Malvo also was eager to show how smart he is. Tests show the 18-year-old has an IQ of 98,...