Sniper suspects set to blame each other

Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Muhammad no longer are laughing and, instead, have turned on each other with just days before the first trial on murder charges from 10 sniper slayings that paralyzed the region a year ago.

Now it is the two vagabond buddies, arrested with the stolen Bushmaster rifle they claim to have found, who seem caught “like a duck in a noose” — in the words of an extortion note prosecutors say the pair wrote.

Both men’s strategies for trial in two Tidewater cities appear to focus primarily on saving their own lives. One pretrial decision at a time, they appear to be losing the battle to avoid conviction for the wave of shootings that their own attorneys say so terrorized the capital region that the trials cannot be held near the scene of the crimes.

Mr. Muhammad, 42, is charged in the Oct. 9, 2002, killing of Gaithersburg civil engineer Dean H. Meyers, 53, at a Manassas-area service station, and killing “at least one other person” within three years. He also is charged with plotting to strike fear into the civilian population and/or intimidate government officials into paying them $10 million. Mr. Muhammad also is charged with “use or display” of a gun in the killing, and conspiracy.

Except for the conspiracy count, Mr. Malvo, 18, faces identical charges in the killing of FBI analyst Linda Franklin, 47, of Arlington, Oct. 14, 2002, in the parking garage of a Home Depot store at Seven Corners in Fairfax.

Prince William County prosecutors portray Mr. Muhammad, an Army veteran of the first Gulf war, as the domineering captain and “moving spirit” of a “killing team” that included him and his brainwashed young acolyte.

Defense attorneys seek what one terms “a constitutional defense” — some obstacle to prosecution or execution on the grounds that civil rights were violated during arrest, detention or trial.

So far, state judges are turning away most of the defense attorneys’ pleas but it remains to be seen if two Virginia prosecutors with a combined 73 years of experience can deliver on state Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore’s written vow to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft: “Virginia has tested and proven criminal statutes under which these murderers can be tried and sentenced to death.”

Terror law tested

Mr. Kilgore’s spokeswoman, Carrie Cantrell, tells The Washington Times his assurance never applied to the state’s untested terrorism law.

“In that letter he was specifically thinking of definitions that had been tried … including killing more than one person in a three-year period,” Mr. Kilgore’s spokeswoman said.

Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney Robert F. Horan said he is confident the novel terrorism law will be upheld. “It’s not even close. I think people get confused that, because it’s a terrorism statute, you have to be a Middle Easterner with a bomb in your hands,” he said in an interview.

For Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul E. Ebert, that law is his best hope to avoid having to prove Mr. Muhammad ever pulled the trigger.

“We don’t have to worry about proving the so-called actual participant in that case, but we do have to show that someone other than the actual triggerman ordered or directed the actual shooter,” Mr. Ebert says.

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