He Wants A “Do-Over”
I had a rougher childhood than most of the kids I went to school with. I’m sure some of you had mighty strict parents also.
And I have to wonder how many of the victims of this slaughterfest had tough and strict unbringings as kids.
But we/they didn’t pick up a rifle and pick off innocent people going about their own business like plastic ducks in some arcade game.
When do they and their families get a “Do-Over”???
One of the snipers who terrorised Washington DC in 2002 is making a fresh appeal that lawyers hope could save him from the death penalty.
His lawyers say the jury that condemned John Allen Muhammad to death was improperly prevented from hearing evidence of his tough childhood.
Muhammad and his teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, went on a killing spree that left 10 people dead.
The capital, as well as parts of Maryland and Virginia, were in a state of terror for several weeks while the pair shot people at random.
The older man was sentenced to death while Boyd was given life in prison.
Now Muhammad’s lawyers are arguing that the jury in his trial should have been able to hear about his upbringing.
As a child he was regularly whipped with hose pipes and electrical cords and beaten with hammers and sticks by family members.
In their filing, lawyers detail much of the evidence that was banned from Muhammad’s 2003 trial because he refused to be interviewed by the prosecutors’ mental-health expert.
As punishment, the trial judge LeRoy F Millette Jr barred the defence from putting on expert testimony of its own during the penalty phase.
Muhammad’s brothers and sisters would have testified that they and Muhammad were regularly beaten by aunts, uncles and grandparents while growing up in Louisiana, when he was known as John Allen Williams, the lawyers said.
They also say there is evidence that Muhammad’s brain suffered abnormalities that are associated with schizophrenia and other disorders.
The appeal is a habeas corpus petition, typically the last round of appeals available to a death row inmate.
Barring extraordinary circumstances, Virginia will be free to execute Muhammad if the habeas petition is not granted by either the federal district judge, the fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond or the US Supreme Court.
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