Convicted Washington Sniper Muhammad Sentenced to Die (Update1)
March 9 (Bloomberg) — John Allen Muhammad, one of two men accused in the sniper-shooting deaths of 10 people in the Washington, D.C., area in 2002, was sentenced to death by a Virginia judge for murdering a man at a gas station.
A jury in Virginia Beach, Virginia, convicted Muhammad of capital murder, terrorism, conspiracy and firearms violations in November for the death of Dean Harold Meyers, 53, who was gunned down in Manassas, Virginia, in October 2002. Meyers was the seventh sniper victim.
The same jury a week later recommended the death sentence for the crime. Prince William County Judge LeRoy F. Millette Jr. today accepted the jury’s recommendation and imposed the death penalty, county sheriff’s Captain Brenda Perkins said in a telephone interview.
“There are no winners today,” Meyers’s brother Bob said at a televised press conference. “This was not a victory. But yet it was something that had to be done and it was done right.”
Muhammad’s execution is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 14, pending appeals, officials said. A formal date will likely be set after an appeal is filed, Prince William County Court Administrator Bob Marsh said.
Muhammad, 42, a U.S. Army veteran, and Lee Boyd Malvo, 18, a native of Jamaica, were accused of 13 shootings in Washington, Maryland and Virginia during a three-week period in October 2002. They are also suspects in shootings in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana and Washington state.
A jury in Chesapeake, Virginia, in December convicted Malvo of murdering a woman outside a suburban shopping center and recommended a sentence of life in prison. Both trials were moved from the Washington area because of publicity about the case.
Virginia has executed 89 people since the death penalty was reinstated in 1982, 27 by electrocution and the rest by lethal injection, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. That’s second only to Texas, which has executed 321 prisoners.
[modF]Normally, I’d say lets shoot him, but he seems to like guns. So lets shoot him 10 times with small flesh wounds, than let him bleed out for a bit[/modF]