The Supreme Court said it will consider whether
Lee Boyd Malvo, the teenage half of the Beltway snipers who terrorized the
Washington region 16 years ago, may challenge his sentence of life in prison
without parole, reported the Washington Post.
Malvo, 34, was a 17-year-old when he and John Allen Muhammad
committed what Virginia officials called “one of the most notorious strings of
terrorist acts in modern American history.” Between Sept. 5 and Oct. 22, 2002,
Muhammad and Malvo killed 10 people and wounded others in sniper attacks in
Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia.
Muhammad was executed in 2009, but Malvo received sentences
of life without parole in Virginia and Maryland.
The Supreme Court’s actions involve the
Virginia sentences and will be heard in the term that starts in October.
After a 2003 trial in which Malvo was convicted of shooting
FBI analyst Linda Franklin outside a Fairfax County Home Depot store, a jury
decided against the death penalty. Instead, it recommended life imprisonment
without the possibility of parole.
Since then, the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on juvenile
murderers has changed. It said the death penalty was off-limits for juveniles,
and in 2012 said that mandatory life sentences without the possibility of
parole were unconstitutional for those under 18.
A divided court found that sentencing a child to life
without parole is excessive for all but “the rare juvenile offender whose crime
reflects irreparable corruption.” In sentencing defendants 17 and younger,
judges must now consider whether a juvenile’s crime reflects “irreparable
corruption” or simply “the transient immaturity of youth.”
The court has also said the rulings are retroactive.
Some courts have interpreted the rulings to mean that
mandatory life without parole laws are unconstitutional, but that those that
offer a judge discretion are not. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled against
Malvo.
But a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit
in Richmond said it was clear Malvo deserved a new sentencing: No judge ever
considered whether Malvo’s crime represented “irreparable corruption.”
The unanimous panel said that the Beltway shootings “were
the most heinous, random acts of premeditated violence conceivable, destroying
lives and families and terrorizing the entire Washington, D.C., metropolitan
area for over six weeks, instilling mortal fear daily in the citizens of that
community.”
But, “Malvo was 17 years old when he committed the murders,
and he now has the retroactive benefit of new constitutional rules that treat
juveniles differently for sentencing,” the judges concluded.
The Virginia Supreme Court had found the commonwealth’s laws
were not incompatible with the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings because “Virginia
law does not preclude a sentencing court from considering mitigating
circumstances, whether they be age or anything else.”
There are similar splits around the country.
Malvo’s Maryland sentences were upheld in 2017. A state
court judge said that the sentencing judge had specifically taken into account
Malvo’s age and other mitigating factors — Malvo was brought illegally into the
country by Muhammad, who was 25 years his senior and masterminded the attacks —
in deciding he deserved life imprisonment.
That decision is on appeal to Maryland’s highest court. In
addition, Malvo has challenged his sentences in federal court in Maryland.
The Supreme Court case is Mathena v.
Malvo .To read more CLICK HERE
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