MANASSAS | Virginia prosecutor Paul B. Ebert knows how to land the big ones.
His office is lined with pictures of his adventures on the water - an 800-pound blue marlin hooked off the coast of Australia, a 260-pound halibut, citations for tuna, and other trophies.
But he’s even more dangerous in the courtroom.
Virginia’s death row is lined with killers the Prince William County commonwealth’s attorney has sent to their demise. Next up: John Allen Muhammad, mastermind of the D.C. sniper attacks that left 10 dead in the Washington area in 2002.
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Mr. Ebert, 72, has sent more men to the death chamber than any other prosecutor in Virginia - more than a dozen, with Muhammad and three others awaiting execution. He calls it a “dubious distinction.”
He says he reserves the death penalty for the “worst of the worst.” Muhammad, who with teenage accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo methodically picked off people over three weeks in October 2002, fits the bill, Mr. Ebert said.
“He caused more hardship and heartache to really good people than most cases will see,” said Mr. Ebert, recalling the pain of victims’ family members who testified during Muhammad’s 2003 trial. “Hopefully, his death will give them some closure and some solace.”
In true Ebert style, he wasted no time letting the snipers know they had crossed into dangerous territory when they fatally shot Vietnam veteran Dean Harold Meyers at a Manassas gas station. There were no suspects, but Mr. Ebert told reporters that he would seek the death penalty if given the chance.
Not long after Muhammad and Malvo were captured while napping at a Maryland rest stop, Mr. Ebert got the call from then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who offered Mr. Ebert first crack at Muhammad because of his record at getting death convictions.
So why is it that so many killers in Prince William County end up on death row?
Mr. Ebert says so many killers in Prince William County end up on death row because of good police work and a sympathetic jury pool of young families in one of the nation’s most affluent suburbs.
Others say it has more to do with his folksy, charming demeanor.
“His good-ole boy persona is very effective because it endears him to jurors,” said James Willett, who has worked alongside Mr. Ebert for 22 years. “They’re not seeing a lawyer who’s looking down his nose at them. He’s talking to them one-on-one.”
Prosecutors often rely on co-defendants or jailhouse snitches for testimony, though defense attorneys argue they aren’t the most credible witnesses. Mr. Ebert will shove his hands deep into his pockets, stroll up to the jury and say, “You know, folks, sometimes to catch a skunk you have to pet a skunk.”
The down-home demeanor can disarm opponents, a dangerous move for someone with such legal moxie.
Mr. Ebert convinced jurors in one case to convict a man for sexually assaulting his daughter, who committed suicide, based on the girl’s diary. He persuaded another that a man who crushed every bone in a woman’s throat with his hands met the capital punishment standard of using a “deadly weapon.” A judge overruled that verdict.
One of Mr. Ebert’s losses came with the world watching minute-by-minute coverage in the John and Lorena Bobbitt penis-amputating case.
Mr. Ebert had worked out a deal in which Mrs. Bobbitt - facing malicious-wounding charges - and Mr. Bobbitt - facing a sexual-assault charge - would plead guilty. Instead, when he came back from a weekend duck hunting trip, attorneys had convinced the couple to go to trial.
In the Muhammad case, Mr. Ebert used an untested anti-terrorism statute spawned by the Sept. 11 attacks. It was probably not what the legislature had in mind, but it fit.
The Muhammad case was the first time Mr. Ebert was both prosecutor and victim. The snipers gunned down people as they went about their daily lives - pumping gas, running errands, mowing grass. Like many others, Mr. Ebert made himself “a moving target,” bobbing his head while gassing up and weaving as he walked.
“Anybody who tells you they weren’t afraid, their credibility’s in question,” he said with a laugh. “The chances of being killed by him, or them I should say, was less than being hit by a car, really, but the fact that somebody’s out there intentionally killing people really put a chill through the entire area.”
Mr. Ebert doesn’t always seek the ultimate punishment, but rationalizes that it was their choice - not his doing - that put them in that position.
He has never witnessed an execution.
“There are very few people that I take any pleasure in them getting the death penalty,” he said. “If there’s any pleasure in it, the fact that they don’t want to die and they have to die is some solace to victims.”
The son of a dentist, Mr. Ebert grew up in Falls Church, spending a lot of his time on his grandfather’s farm, where he developed a nearly lifelong love for hunting and fishing.
Never boastful, Mr. Ebert says he’s an adequate hunter, and as a fisherman, “probably as good as most.” His love of fishing got him into trouble in Maryland in 1993, when he paid a $500 fine for catching too many rockfish on the Potomac River.
Mr. Ebert got married during his senior year at Virginia Tech and decided not to take a management job. Instead, he took night classes at George Washington University’s law school as his family expanded with three children.
Mr. Ebert was interested in personal-injury law and took a job in the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, where a budding lawyer can quickly rack up trial experience.
The top prosecutor ran for another office, and Mr. Ebert’s co-workers persuaded him to run for the job. At 29, he became the state’s youngest commonwealth’s attorney.
Today, he is Virginia’s longest-serving prosecutor.
Mr. Ebert doesn’t know whether he’ll run again. He has a couple of years to make up his mind.
A licensed captain, he always thought he would lead private fishing parties when he got sick of putting criminals behind bars, but says “my personality isn’t such that I can put up with a lot of orders.” He often donates trips for school auctions and other fundraisers.
“I don’t know what I’d do, other than go fishing,” he says, “and that could get boring, I think, day in and day out.”
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