Prosecutors in Virginia filed capital murder charges Monday against the two suspects in the Washington-area sniper attacks, escalating the high-stakes legal race among jurisdictions bidding to stage the first trial.
In a separate development Monday, authorities in Washington state said they had linked one of the suspects, John Allen Muhammad, to the Tacoma shooting death of a 21-year-old woman whose aunt once worked for Muhammad’s auto repair business.
Muhammad, 41, also is linked to a shooting last spring at a Tacoma synagogue in which no one was injured, Tacoma police said.
Tacoma Police Chief David Brame said that a citizen contacted the FBI last week and said he had allowed Muhammad and his alleged accomplice, John Lee Malvo, 17, to borrow his weapons, including a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun.
Keenya Cook was shot in the face Feb. 16 when she opened the door to the house where she lived.
In the synagogue case, Brame said a .44-caliber Magnum, borrowed from the same man, was used in a shooting at Temple Beth El between May 1 and May 4. No one was believed to be at the synagogue at the time.
In the District of Columbia, authorities said that federal charges against the suspects could be filed Tuesday.
“We are looking at the facts and evidence to determine what federal charges could be brought,” a Justice Department official said. “We are also working with our state and local colleagues to determine the best route for prosecution.”
There has been intense speculation for several days that a federal case could be linked to the Hobbs Act, which involves extortion. A letter demanding $10 million was discovered at the scene of the Oct. 19 shooting in Ashland, Va.
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The jockeying among prosecutors, which broke out over the weekend, is in marked contrast to the extraordinary cooperation among regional law-enforcement authorities desperate to end the shooting rampage that left 10 people dead and three wounded in Maryland, Virginia and Washington.
On Friday, prosecutors in Montgomery County, Md., filed six murder charges against the accused.
On Monday, prosecutors in three Virginia counties filed charges against the two suspects. Malvo was charged in juvenile courts, but authorities said they would seek to transfer the cases so he could be tried as an adult.
In Spotsylvania County, Va., where Kenneth Bridges was killed Oct. 11 while pumping gas and an unidentified woman was wounded Oct. 4, Muhammad and Malvo face multiple charges, including capital murder.
In Prince William County, Va., where Dean Meyers was killed Oct. 9 while pumping gas, a grand jury charged Muhammad and Malvo with capital murder and conspiracy to commit murder under a tough anti-terrorism law created after the Sept. 11 attacks.
In Hanover County, Va., site of an Oct. 19 shooting that wounded a man outside a Ponderosa steakhouse, prosecutors filed charges against the two, including attempted murder and terrorizing the public.
Death penalty issue
“Personally, I don’t care who tries them first,” said Paul Ebert, Prince William County’s chief prosecutor. “I do believe Virginia is in the best position to get the death penalty.”
But Spotsylvania County Sheriff Ronald Knight said that because six of the slayings occurred in Montgomery County, Md., he understood why authorities there are eager to be the first to try the two.
Despite the public wrangling over which jurisdiction will get first crack at prosecuting the alleged snipers, criminal defense lawyers said Monday that it probably wouldn’t matter from a legal perspective how prosecutors eventually line up. Each jurisdiction will get to prosecute, regardless of which one is first.
The legal struggle erupted late last week after Montgomery County State’s Atty. Douglas Gansler announced charges against Muhammad and Malvo and argued that his office should be first to prosecute them because more people were killed in the county than in any other area. Gansler also said he would pursue the death penalty against Muhammad despite a moratorium on capital punishment in Maryland.
Virginia and Alabama–where the two suspects face murder charges for the Sept. 21 killing of a liquor store employee–could impose the death penalty against Malvo. Maryland bars execution of juvenile defendants.
Complicating matters is that there is no formula for deciding where the first trial will take place. Prosecutors from the different jurisdictions will have to work it out among themselves, said Thomas Buchanan, a Washington attorney and former federal prosecutor in Virginia.
“But at the end of the day, what does it matter? These guys aren’t going anywhere,” Buchanan said. “If Maryland pursues life without parole, then Virginia can go forward a year from now and give the death penalty, and then Alabama can give death, and the appeals will be exhausted in four or five years, and that will be it.”
Similar case in Illinois
Criminal defense lawyers pointed out a similar case in Illinois involving serial killer Alton Coleman, who was linked to eight murders during a seven-week spree across six Midwestern states in 1984.
Coleman was arrested in Evanston but was sent to Ohio for his first trial, where he was sentenced to death. He also was sentenced to death for killing an Indiana girl and, finally, for strangling a 9-year-old girl in Illinois. He was executed this year in Ohio.
Leonard Kirschner, a Cincinnati attorney who was involved in the Ohio prosecution, said it was a “cooperative effort” among prosecutors. Ohio went first, he said, because it had several victims, strong evidence and the death penalty.
After Coleman’s arrest in Illinois, Dan Webb, then the U.S. attorney in Chicago, met with all the prosecutors from the pertinent jurisdictions to decide how to proceed, said Chicago lawyer Jeremy Margolis, who was then an assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago.
“The prosecutors got together, sat down, hashed it out and moved forward,” said Margolis, a former Illinois inspector general and director of the Illinois State Police.
“We made a decision there in a couple of hours to fully cooperate and fully exchange evidence and endeavor to prosecute Alton Coleman in every state in which murder had been committed, first in each state with the death penalty,” Margolis said.