John Allen Muhammad

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John Allen Muhammad (born John Allen Williams on December 31, 1960), with his younger partner Lee Boyd Malvo, carried out the 2002 Beltway sniper attacks which resulted in the death of ten individuals. This was an apparent attempt to extort $10 million dollars. Muhammad and Malvo were arrested in connection with the attacks on October 24, 2002, following tips from alert citizens.

His trial for one of the murders (the murder of Dean Harold Meyers in Prince William County, Virginia) began in October 2003, and the following month, he was found guilty of capital murder. Four months later he was sentenced to death. While awaiting execution in Virginia, in August 2005, he was extradited to Maryland to face some of the charges there, for which he was convicted of six counts of first-degree murder on May 30, 2006. Upon completion of the trial activity in Maryland, it was planned that he next be returned to Virginia's death row unless some agreement is reached with another state or the District of Columbia seeking to try him. As of October 2006, he has not been tried on additional charges in other Virginia jurisdictions, and faces potential trials in three other states and the District of Columbia involving other deaths and serious woundings.

Contents 1 Background 2 Prosecution, convictions, death sentence, pending charges 3 Civil lawsuit 4 External links

[edit] Background

Muhammad is a U.S. Army veteran of the Gulf War. In the Army, Muhammad was trained as a mechanic, truck driver and specialist metalworker. He qualified as an "expert" with the M16, the Army's standard infantry rifle. This rating is the Army's highest of three levels of marksmanship for a typical soldier.

Born John Allen Williams, he changed his name to Muhammad in October 2001. For a time he was a member of the religious black separatist group Nation of Islam; friends say Muhammad helped provide security for Louis Farrakhan's "Million Man March" in 1995, but Farrakhan has publicly distanced himself and his organization from Muhammad's actions. [1] It was theorized that Muhammad left the Nation of Islam around 1999 and then joined Jamaat al-Fuqra, which is a Black militant Islamic group. [2] However, later investigations indicated that he moved out of the country and spent time in Antigua during this period, apparently engaging in credit card and immigration document fraud activities. It was during this time that he became close with a young teenage boy, Lee Boyd Malvo, who later became his partner in the serial killings.

After his arrest, authorities also claimed that Muhammad admitted that he admired and modeled himself after Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and approved of the September 11, 2001 attacks. One of Malvo's psychiatric witnesses testified in his trial that Muhammad had indoctrinated him into believing that the proceeds of the extortion attempt would be used to begin a new nation of only pure black young persons somewhere in Canada.

Muhammad is twice divorced; one former wife, Mildred Muhammad, sought and was granted a restraining order. Muhammad was arrested on federal charges of violating the restraining order against him, by possessing a weapon.

Main article: Beltway sniper attacks

Muhammad was caught after police followed a lead in which an anonymous caller (presumably Muhammad) told a priest to tell the police to check out a liquor store robbery-murder that had occurred in Montgomery, Alabama. Investigators responding to that crime scene found one of the suspects had dropped a magazine with his fingerprints on it, these were subsequently identified as belonging to 17 year old Jamaican immigrant Lee Boyd Malvo, whose prints were on file with the INS. Malvo was known to associate with Muhammad. They had lived together in Bellingham, Washington for around one year, where Malvo used the alias John Lee Malvo. Identifying Muhammad led to the discovery that he had purchased a former police car, a blue Chevrolet Caprice, in New Jersey on September 11, 2002. A lookout broadcast to the public on that vehicle resulted in their arrest when it was spotted parked in a Maryland rest area on Interstate 70 by a truck driver.

[edit] Prosecution, convictions, death sentence, pending charges

In October 2003, Muhammad went on trial for the murder of Dean Meyers at a Prince William County service station near the city of Manassas. The trial had been moved from Prince William County, to Virginia Beach, approximately 200 miles away. Muhammad was granted the right to represent himself in his defense, and dismissed his legal counsel, though he immediately switched back to having legal representation after his opening argument. Muhammad was charged with murder, terrorism, conspiracy and the illegal use of a firearm, and faced a possible death sentence. Prosecutors said the shootings were part of a plot to extort $10 million from local and state governments. The prosecution said that they would make the case for 16 shootings allegedly involving Muhammad. The terrorism charge against Muhammad required prosecutors to prove he committed at least two shootings in a three-year period.

The prosecution called more than 130 witnesses and introduced more than 400 pieces of evidence intended to prove that Muhammad had undertaken the shooting spree and ordered Malvo to help carry it out. That evidence included a rifle, found in Muhammad's car, that has been linked by ballistics tests not only to 8 of the 10 killings in the Washington area but also to 2 others, in Louisiana and Alabama; the car itself, which was modified, prosecutors say, so that a sniper could shoot from inside the trunk; and a laptop computer, also found in the car, that contained maps with icons pinpointing shooting scenes.

There were also witness accounts that put Muhammad across the street from one shooting and his car near the scene of several others. And there was a recorded phone call to a police hotline in which a man, his voice identified by a detective as Muhammad's, demanded money in exchange for stopping the shootings.

Muhammad's defense asked the court to drop the capital murder charges due to the fact that there was no direct evidence. Malvo's fingerprints were on the Bushmaster rifle found in Muhammad's car, and genetic material from Muhammad himself was also discovered on the rifle. But the defense contended that Muhammad could not be put to death under Virginia's so-called trigger-man law unless he actually pulled the trigger to kill Meyers, and no one testified that they saw him do so.

On November 17, 2003, by verdict of his jury, Muhammad was convicted in Virginia of all four counts in the indictment against him: capital murder for the shooting of Dean H. Meyers; a second charge of capital murder under Virginia's antiterrorism statute, for homicide committed with an intent to terrorize the government or the public at large; conspiracy to commit murder; and the illegal use of a firearm.

In the penalty phase of the trial, the jury after five hours of deliberation over two days unanimously recommended that Muhammad should be sentenced to death. On March 9, 2004, a Virginia judge agreed with the jury's recommendation and sentenced John Allen Muhammad to death.

On April 22, 2005, the Virginia Supreme Court affirmed his death penalty, stating that Muhammad could be sentenced to death because the murder was part of an act of terrorism. The court also rejected an argument by defense lawyers that he could not be sentenced to death because he was not the triggerman in the killings done by Muhammad and his young accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo.

"With calculation, extensive planning, premeditation and ruthless disregard for life, Muhammad carried out his cruel scheme of terror." Virginia Supreme Court Justice Donald Lemons

It is not clear how many any other jurisdictions will be allowed to try him on the capital charges they have pending before he is executed in Virginia. In May 2005, Maryland and Virginia reached an agreement to allow his extradition to face Maryland charges, but Muhammad was fighting the action legally. He was held at the maximum security Sussex I State Prison near Waverly in Sussex County, Virginia, which houses Virginia's death row inmates. While awaiting execution in Virginia, in August 2005, he was extradited to Montgomery County, Maryland to face some of the charges there.

On May 30, 2006, a Maryland jury found John Allen Muhammad guilty of six counts of murder in Maryland. In return, he was sentenced to six consecutive life terms without possibility of parole on June 1, 2006. Whether or not Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, and Washington State will move to try Muhammad, given his death sentence for murder in Virginia, remains unclear. In 2006, Malvo confessed that the pair also killed victims in California, Arizona, and Texas, making 16 and possibly 17 victims.

[edit] Civil lawsuit

In 2003, Malvo and Muhammad were named in a major civil lawsuit by the Legal Action Project of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence on behalf of some two of their victims who were seriously wounded and the families of some of those murdered. Although Malvo and Muhammad were each believed to be indigent, codefendants Bull's Eye Shooter Supply and Bushmaster Firearms, Inc. contributed to a landmark $2.5 million out-of-court settlement in late 2004.

[edit] External links

• Sniper Trial: Full Coverage
• An Angry Telephone Call Provided One Crucial Clue, The New York Times, October 25, 2002 - explains tracking and arrest of Muhammad (paid article)
• Minister Louis Farrakhan addresses sniper arrest Press Conference Transcript, October 26, 2002
• CNN Special Report: Sniper Attacks, the legal case
• Indictment Virginia. v. Muhammad
• Order changing venue: Virginia v. Muhammad
• NY Times-Prosecution closes case

Persondata
NAME	Muhammad, John Allen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Williams, John Allen
SHORT DESCRIPTION	serial killer
DATE OF BIRTH	December 31, 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE OF DEATH	living
PLACE OF DEATH