The sniper who went on the shooting spree was convicted on 6 counts of murder.
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Good to know this was finally put to rest, I remember the panic it caused at the time.
Muhammad found guilty on 6 counts of murder
Montgomery County jury convicts sniper for role in 2002 shooting spree
By Andrea F. Siegel
Sun Reporter
Published May 30, 2006, 2:02 PM CDT
ROCKVILLE -- John Allen Muhammad was found guilty this afternoon of murdering six people in Montgomery County during the 2002 sniper rampage by a jury that rejected his claim that he was framed.
Jurors deliberated for more than four hours before convicting Muhammad, 45. The verdict was read just after 2:15 p.m.
Muhammad sat grim-faced, with his arms folded across chest as the verdict was read. As he was led from the courtroom he said, "Your honor, may I speak?"
Montgomery County Circuit Judge James L. Ryan answered, "No sir," and Muhammad was led away.
After the verdict, Vijay Walekar, brother of sniper victim Premkumar Walekar, said, "I wish they had the death penalty."
Muhammad can receive up to six consecutive life terms in prison without parole in Maryland -- a sentence that may prove meaningless if he is executed in Virginia.
Asked how he felt, Walekar replied, "He stands up and denies everything up there. It was hard for us to take it."
The verdict ended a bizarre trial in which a man already on death row for a sniper slaying in Virginia acted as his own lawyer and questioned witnesses against him -- from the youth who mesmerized the courtroom with admissions of being Muhammad's murderous puppet to the federal computer experts he called "hackers."
A condemned man, he seemed to enjoy his role of authority as he stood at the defense table in his standby lawyers' suits, flanked by his legal team for advice and by a tactical team for security.
The trial itself was controversial. Some argued that it was a pointless waste of money to try a man already on death row elsewhere. But State's Attorney Douglas F. Gansler, a candidate for Maryland attorney general, said a conviction would provide insurance should Muhammad win an appeal in his Virginia case as well as offer a closing chapter for the devastated families of victims and residents of the county that suffered the most attacks.
Prosecutors dwarfed Muhammad's defense strategy as they presented testimony from more than 100 witnesses, showed jurors more than 300 items of evidence and called Muhammad a "pathetic coward." Seventeen witnesses, including police officers, placed Muhammad, his 1990 blue Chevrolet Caprice, or accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo, in the vicinity of sniper killings shortly before or after victims were felled by a single long-distance shot.
The six slaying victims were among 13 people shot in the Washington area, including 10 fatally, during three weeks in October 2002. The pair is suspected in shootings in Washington, Georgia, Louisiana and Alabama, as well as other crimes.
Muhammad was convicted here in the October 2002 killings of Walekar, 54; James D. Martin, 55; James L. "Sonny" Buchanan, 39; Maria Sarah Ramos, 34; Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, 25; and Conrad E. Johnson, 35.
Muhammad contended that he and Malvo were the victims of a vast law enforcement conspiracy, for which he offered neither proof nor evidence. He argued that the pair really had come to the Washington area so that Muhammad could find and reclaim the children he lost to his ex-wife in a nasty custody battle. He argued throughout the trial that he was stymied by the judge and prosecutors at every turn, as he sought to summons more than 500 witnesses but ended up with nine and was barred from many lines of questioning.
In a rambling closing argument Friday that lasted nearly 3 1/2 hours, Muhammad compared himself to Jesus, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other martyred figures. He cited the Bible and the Koran, invoked the words of Andrew Jackson as well as Groucho Marx, and shouted at the jurors.
"My case is based on one thing and it's very simple: They lied on two people," he told the jury -- and later he asked the jury to find the prosecutors guilty.
He maintained that the prosecution's case was built on "stupid sense" as opposed to common sense, saying "I call these cases the cow jumping over the moon."
He dismissed the testimony of Malvo, his former protégé whom he continued to call "my son" throughout the trial, as brainwashing by police -- a twist on Malvo's defense at his own 2003 murder trial in Virginia that Muhammad had indoctrinated him. Malvo was convicted of a sniper murder in that trial and is serving multiple life sentences without parole. Last week, Malvo agreed to plead guilty to the same six murders for which Muhammad has been standing trial for most of the month of May.
As the trial began with jury selection, Muhammad drifted between alleging CIA involvement in the conspiracy against him to impressing some observers with his use of popular legal terminology. But as the prosecution turned from laying out 14 shootings to using DNA, fingerprints and computer analysis to tie him to the six slayings, he grew agitated and at times appeared disorganized, his lack of trial savvy evident. He did not testify for himself.
Prosecutors asked jurors to note that if Muhammad had an address for his children as he claimed -- they were in Clinton with his ex-wife -- why was he roaming the Washington area, repeatedly spotted in such distant sites as Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Fredericksburg, Va.?
In closing arguments, Assistant State's Attorney Vivek Chopra told jurors that Muhammad made "godlike decisions" with victims he chose at random, shooting them with a high-velocity rifle he stowed behind the back seat of a sniper's lair on wheels.
"Call me God indeed," Chopra nodded, in a clear reference to a distinguishing line in the snipers' cryptic notes and telephone calls to police.
As they had at Muhammad's 2003 trial in Virginia, jurors saw the car in which he and Malvo were arrested before dawn on Oct. 24, 2002, as they napped at an Interstate 70 rest stop near Frederick.
Chopra eerily reminded the jury of the changes witnesses said Muhammad made to it -- a gunport cut into the trunk, windows tinted dark, a back seat rebuilt with a hinge to allow a person to crawl into the trunk undetected -- "deadly changes that allowed him to kill with perceived impunity."
Prosecutors told the jury that Malvo's testimony was important, but not needed for a conviction. Chopra described Malvo as a child of 15 when he met Muhammad on the Caribbean island of Antigua, a youth desperate for parental love as he was abandoned by his mother and had barely any contact with his father. Malvo was easy prey for Muhammad, who turned him into a cold killer, Chopra said.
"This is a man this child said he would die for," Deputy State's Attorney Katherine Winfree told the jury. She said Muhammad created a means to "duck behind a 17-year-old boy" if arrested, telling Malvo to accept full responsibility for the shootings because as a juvenile, he was an unlikely candidate for a death sentence.
The snipers sought to extort $10 million to end the violence, according to the prosecution. Malvo told a rapt jury that the sniper shootings were a warm-up to a violent rampage of shootings and terrorist-style bombings in Baltimore. The cash the government would pay out would bankroll Muhammad's vision of creating a community in Canada where he would train 140 children to replicate his crimes across the United States in a move to disrupt the economy and spark a revolution, Malvo testified that Muhammad told him.
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Good to know this was finally put to rest, I remember the panic it caused at the time.