Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Kommandant on March 09, 2004, 06:44:18 PM
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Sniper Muhammad sentenced to death
Judge follows jury's recommendation
Tuesday, March 9, 2004 Posted: 1:20 PM EST (1820 GMT)
Muhammad listens to testimony before being sentenced to death Tuesday.
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• Prosecutors' intent to seek death penalty (FindLaw, PDF)
• Jury recommends death for Muhammad
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MANASSAS, Virginia (CNN) -- A Virginia judge Tuesday sentenced John Allen Muhammad to death for killing Dean Harold Meyers -- one of 10 people shot to death during the October 2002 sniper shootings.
Prince William County Circuit Judge LeRoy Millette Jr. made the decision after reviewing a jury's recommendation.
Millette said the jury correctly found that Muhammad, 43, would be a "continuing, serious threat to society" if allowed to live.
Millette said he looked at other cases in Virginia for comparison, and "there simply are no other crimes" of the same magnitude.
Millette set an October 14 execution date, but that will likely be delayed by an appeal.
Before Millette pronounced the sentence, Muhammad insisted, "I had nothing to do with this."
"You do what you have to do and let me do what I have to do to defend myself," he told the judge.
Most of the sniper victims were gunned down in the Maryland and Virginia areas around the nation's capital.
Meyers, 53, was shot and killed October 9, 2002, while he was pumping gas at a Sunoco station in Manassas. It was one of 13 shootings that terrorized the region during a three-week span.
Muhammad's accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, 19, was convicted in a separate trial of another sniper shooting. A jury sentenced him to life without parole. His formal sentencing is set for Wednesday.
Muhammad's attorneys had pleaded that his life be spared, arguing in court papers filed Friday that "if someone is able to change from a loving father to a killer, then time can also change him back yet again."
Throughout his trial and sentencing, Muhammad, 43, maintained his innocence, and his attorneys have sought to overturn the verdict and sentence on numerous legal grounds. They also have laid the groundwork for future appeals.
Because the sniper killings took place in several jurisdictions, Muhammad and Malvo could be tried elsewhere, and one prosecutor said they should be.
"There's always the possibility of appeal and reversal on appeal," said Douglas Gansler, state's attorney for Montgomery County, Maryland. "We should try these men in other states applying other laws to other facts."
Future prosecutions of Malvo -- who was a minor at the time of the killings -- may be delayed until after the U.S. Supreme Court decides next year whether juvenile death sentences are constitutional.
A six-page document filed last week on Muhammad's behalf put aside questions of guilt or about legal procedure, asking Millette to reduce the verdict.
The filing said the court should consider Muhammad "was born an innocent infant, then became a child and a man who was buffeted by crushing poverty, neglect and abuse, by war, and ultimately by the loss of his children and his marriage."
Prosecutors allege that Muhammad was motivated by the loss of his children in a bitter divorce with his wife, Mildred.
The court filing, by attorneys Peter Greenspun and Jonathan Shapiro, goes on to say that Muhammad was "a proud member of the ROTC" and served in the Louisiana and Oregon national guards and the U.S. Army. They said he had no previous criminal record
The filing also said that the state would be wrong to sanction another killing and that it would serve only to make Muhammad's children fatherless.
CNN's Mike Ahlers and Jeanne Meserve contributed to this report.
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How many counts of murder? Like 10 or so right.
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He's getting off light...Needle..sleep.... and thats that
To bad he wont feel the pain he caused to the victims and there families.
Wish him the best of luck in HELL. 1 less the state has to take care of.
:mad:
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1 less and yet still not enough...
Bring back cruel and unusual executions. No real deterrant to know you're going to be given drugs which you won't feel a thing.
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Lethal injection. I do believe the last remaining Electric chair is in Florida. It's active, but not used.
I could be wrong though.
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Send'm to Utah - they still use the firing squad.
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Originally posted by lasersailor184
1 less and yet still not enough...
Bring back cruel and unusual executions. No real deterrant to know you're going to be given drugs which you won't feel a thing.
Still won't stop the murdering animals....not as long as they think they will get away with it.
"They" just don't think like normal folk.
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Originally posted by lasersailor184
Lethal injection. I do believe the last remaining Electric chair is in Florida. It's active, but not used.
I could be wrong though.
Texas still has theirs plus as an added bonus there is an "express" line as of last year
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Hehe.
The reason the death sentence doesn't work is because it isn't feared untill the person is literally 4 feet in front of the chair.
It needs to be extremely painful, and extremely public. Only then will these idiots see what will happen if they do certain things.
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Interesting, laser.
That's what some Islamic countries do which many westerners call barbaric.
Ravs
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No, liberals call it barbaric. We call it progress.
I read somewhere the amount of people who cry minutes before the sentence is carried out. It didn't actually occur to these people that they were going to be killed. Most of them thought they could get off. And most do. No real deterrant here.
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My guess is that in some years, executions will not only be public, but pay-per-view. That way the criminals will pay for the expenses of the trial, imprisonment, and execution. Ratings would go wild.
Daniel
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It could be just on free TV.
This execution brought to you by the makers of "Dodge Trucks, dodge tough!" and "Coca-Cola."
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Originally posted by lasersailor184
Hehe.
The reason the death sentence doesn't work is because it isn't feared untill the person is literally 4 feet in front of the chair.
It needs to be extremely painful, and extremely public. Only then will these idiots see what will happen if they do certain things.
...and we'd still have executions no matter what.
It's not the punishment that they fear, it's the fear of getting caught.
As long as they think they can get away with it, they'll do the crime...no matter the punishment.
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Originally posted by CyranoAH
My guess is that in some years, executions will not only be public, but pay-per-view. That way the criminals will pay for the expenses of the trial, imprisonment, and execution. Ratings would go wild.
Daniel
The trouble when we go down that road is that we might start executing innocent people just to keep the ratings up. When big money gets involved, we just might not "pursue truth and justice" as vigorously as we should or could. We've never been perfect on executing only the truly guilty. Until then, I won't support a death penalty. It just doesn't reduce capital crime.
The death penalty is just for us to get revenge on those we think are guilty. The crime(s) committed that the condemned is found guilty of won't be undone.
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And here I thought this may have been another personal crisis hoax. Sorry. Carry on.