Beltway sniper asks court to reconsider sentencing
An attorney for Beltway sniper Lee Boyd Malvo is asking a court to resentence his client, arguing that a judge in Maryland did not properly consider his youth during sentencing in 2006.
During oral arguments before the state's highest court on Tuesday, Malvo's lawyer said that his current punishment of six life sentences without the possibility of parole is a violation of a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that bans mandatory life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders, according to WTOP.
In 2006, Malvo was sentenced for his role in killing six people in Montgomery County, Md., during a shooting rampage in 2002. Malvo acted along with John Allen Muhammad, killing a total of 10 people and injuring three across Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
According to the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. Alabama, life sentences should be barred for defendants 17 and younger except for cases of "all but the rarest of juvenile offenders, those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility," WTOP noted. Malvo was 17 at the time of the shootings.
"To be clear, we're not suggesting [Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge James Ryan] did not know that Malvo was 17 years old at the time of these offenses," Malvo's attorney, Kiran Iyer, reportedly said on Tuesday. "There's no discussion of Malvo's immaturity, and the diminished culpability of juvenile offenders, which of course is the central thrust of Miller, the central fact that must be considered in sentencing."
In 2006, Malvo testified against Muhammad for his Montgomery County murder cases as part of his guilty plea. Muhammad was later executed by lethal injection in 2009 at a prison in Virginia.
Iyer noted that at Ryan wrote in the sentencing transcript at the time that that "community does not forgive these offenses," WTOP reported.
"I think that makes it clear that the basis of this decision was retribution, not incorrigibility, not a belief that Malvo was incapable of being rehabilitated," Iyer reportedly said.
Malvo has been in custody since 2002 and could theoretically be considered for review this year, WTOP noted, but his attorney and prosecutors in Virginia and Maryland have reportedly said that the weight of his crimes make the possibility of parole ever being granted virtually nonexistent.
