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Gazette reporter Agnes Blum is covering the trial of Lee Boyd Malvo in
Chesapeake, Va. She will be posting to this site several times each day
to update readers on the events of the trial. Malvo is charged with killing Linda G. Franklin, the ninth victim in a spate of October 2002 shootings that killed 10 and wounded three. John Allen Muhammad was convicted and sentenced to death for the crimes in a separate trial; click here for our coverage of his trial. For background on the shootings, see www.gazette.net/sniper. For our print coverage and archives of the online journal, please look at the righthand column of this page. |
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Friday, Dec. 19
3:48 p.m. After lunch, Cooley called the first defense witness, Steven L. Clarke. Clarke is the principal of Bellingham High School in Washington, which Malvo attended briefly. Clarke called Malvo “hardworking” and “respectful,” and said he “was in challenging classes and welcomed that.” Malvo was on track to graduate, Clarke said. The next witness, Lorenzo Roy King, a Seventh Day Adventist pastor from Jamaica, said he hadn’t seen Malvo since 1999. Malvo was a member of his congregation, he said, and was baptized in 1999. He did not meet either of Malvo’s parents until after Malvo had been arrested in the United States. To get baptized, he walked two miles to the church, carrying his clothes. King described Malvo as lonely and searching for a place to belong. The next witness was Esmie McLeod, the vice principal of a high school Malvo attended in Jamaica. Malvo was friends with her son, she said, and was therefor a friend of hers as well. “I thought he was such a sweet child, he could be any parent’s child and joy,” McLeod said. “I was attached to him professionally and as a friend.” She said she detected an “emotional fragility” in him and sensed his yearning for stability and family. McLeod also shed some light on Malvo’s torture and killing of a cat in Jamaica, which has been the object of speculation. “As a part of our culture, we place no premium on cats,” she said, adding that it was not unusual in Jamaica for boys to kill cats, birds and mongoose. “They are thieves,” she said of cats, “they steal the fish and people stone them.” McLeod began to break down and cry when describing Malvo’s home life and how “unfair it was” that he was moved from place to place. “We are all hurting so much for Lee.” She spoke through tears about how his peers have gone on to college and then kept repeating “It’s just not fair” as she cried. The next witness was Beth Ann Crissy, a Bellingham High School teacher who had Malvo in her Advanced Placement biology class while he was a student there. Malvo’s stay was unusual in that he came into the AP class halfway through the semester but was able to catch up. “Lee was always a great participant in this class, he fit right in,” Crissy said. “He had a very good mind for science.” Unlike the other students, she said, “Lee always raised his hand.” He was often at school by the time she arrived at 6:15 a.m., which was well before school started at 7:45 a.m. Frequently he volunteered to come into her classroom and help set up. When Malvo was detained in an INS detention center, Crissy said, she sent him the final exam so he could still finish the class. He completed the exam and earned an A minus. The last witness for the afternoon was Winsom Maxwell, a teacher from Jamaica. Malvo lived with her parents for a brief time. Horan objected to many of the questions Petrovich asked of Maxwell, saying those questions had been answered in the guilt phase. The judge sustained the objections. “I realized he was a sad boy searching for love,” Maxwell said. “I did the best I could; I took him with me when I could.” Horan objected again and Judge Roush said, “This really is a complete repeat of her testimony in the guilt phase,” adding that if one more objection was made, she would end the witness’ testimony. Maxwell said she regrets letting Malvo’s mother come and take him. “I’m still thinking if I had just said no, Lee would not be where he is now.” Court was adjourned for the weekend, to be resumed at 10 a.m. Monday. The lawyers are planning to meet an hour beforehand to hash out the jury instructions. Cooley said there would be 1 1/2 to 3 1/2 more hours of defense testimony.
12:05 p.m.
Ronald D. Hibbard Jr. was the next witness, a Frederick County sheriff's deputy who was at the Frederick County rest stop when Malvo was arrested. He was stationed outside an interrogation room while Malvo waited inside for Montgomery County Police detectives to question him. He heard a crashing sound, opened the room and saw a chair on the table and Malvo halfway into the ceiling, broken ceiling tiles on the floor below. Katrina E. Hannum, Linda Franklin's daughter, was the last witness to testify. Fighting back tears, she told how her mother raised her and her brother. Linda Franklin was a single mom, and as children, she said, they had "no father figure" and attended nine schools in five countries. "The day I lost my mom I lost my brother, too. He can't handle it. The day I lost my mom I lost my whole family." She called her mother "a golden thread" that kept her family together. "And it's all gone now." Hannum, 25, told the jury how excited her mother had been when she learned she was going to be a grandmother. She did not live to see her grandson. She said she cannot function because of the shooting. "Every day when I get up in the morning I cry. When I go to bed I cry, I am afraid to go to sleep because of the nightmares," Hannum said. "Almost every night I have to watch this man shoot my mom in the head." The prosecution rested, and court was adjourned until 2 p.m.
11:33 a.m.
The ranks of reporters have thinned to about a third of what they were yesterday as the trial enters the sentencing phase, in which Malvo faces the possibility of death. Court began with the judge ruling that the families of victims other than Linda Franklin and Dean Meyers could testify in this phase. Morrough asked her to allow the 911 tape of William Franklin reporting the shooting of his wife on Oct. 14, 2002 because “vileness” was now an issue. The tape was excluded during the trial. The judge said she would allow it to be played. After the jurors came in and took their seats, Horan began his brief opening statements by telling the jury that they would hear witnesses “testify about the anguish and heartache that goes with losing a loved one.” The way the crime impacted the victims and their lives is relevant now, the way it wasn’t in the guilt phase. Horan told them he would present evidence about an escape attempt made Malvo made on the night he was arrested. Walsh then got up and told the jury that deciding whether to sentence Malvo to death or life in prison without parole was “the hardest decision you’ll make.” He told the jurors that they would have to decide whether Malvo posed a future threat, and whether the crime was vile. If they found either of those criteria true, they could consider death, Walsh said, but were not obligated to impose it. Walsh said he went to Kingston and walked in Malvo’s footsteps in Endeavor. Witnesses speaking on Malvo’s behalf will include his teachers from Bellingham, Wash. as well as his father, Leslie Malvo. He asked the jury to consider Malvo’s age at the time of the crimes. “We accept your finding of guilt. We acknowledge that we accept that,” Walsh said. “Seventeen — you can’t buy cigarettes. You can’t vote. You can’t go to an R-rated movie. You’re a minor. You’re a juvenile.” He said he hope the jury would see the value of Malvo’s life. “We ask you to spare his life,” Walsh said. The first witness was William Franklin, Linda Franklin’s husband, who was with her when she was shot in a Home Depot parking lot near Falls Church, Va. Morrogh then played the tape of Franklin’s hysterical 911 call, which had been excluded during the trial. The next witness was Denise Johnson, Conrad Johnson’s wife. In a soft-spoken voice, the mother of two described her marriage and how she found out her husband had been killed. “He was a very loving person, very kind, generous. He was a mentor, very active in the community, he was a basketball coach — to meet him was to love him.” She told how on her birthday in 2002, Johnson, a bus driver, organized an entire busload of people to sing Happy Birthday to her. She recalled how he used her “fifteen-dollar lipstick” to write love notes on the mirror for her to find later. He was active in the lives of their two boys, she said, and always cheery. She laughed when she remembered how she told him he was abnormal because he never seemed to have a bad day. “It’s a great loss; it’s a void that will never be filled,” she said, adding that she thinks of her husband ”every day, every minute.” The next witness was Vijay Walekar, younger brother of shooting victim Premkumar Walekar. Walekar told the jury that he and his brother were both Seventh Day Adventists who attended church regularly. Malvo, of course, was raised as a Seventh Day Adventist in Jamaica. Premkumar Walekar, a father to two grown children, was the cook of the family, who prepared the turkey for Thanksgiving each year, Vijay Walekar said. “It’s still like a shock,” he said, “My sister-in-law, every time I call her, she cries.” The last time he saw his brother was the Saturday before he was killed. They passed each other at church – one leaving services and the other heading in to attend them. Victoria Buchanan Snyder, the sister of James “Sonny” Buchanan,” was next. She said she mothered her younger brother when they were growing up. “I can honestly say he was my best friend and confidante,” Snyder said. She described him as a mentor who spent a lot of time volunteering in the community and mentoring. Buchanan was very close with his mother, with whom he lived. Not only was he good with his hands and a nature lover, he was an avid reader as well. “He wrote beautiful poems,” she said. “He loved to write.” She broke down in tears as she described the moment when the police came to her home and told her it was her brother who had been shot. She then called her mother and her father to tell them. She spoke of the terror inflicted on her community, helicopters circling above. The day she visited her brother’s funeral home, she said, Iran Brown was shot. “Every time I turned around, somebody else was being shot and killed,” she said. “While we all move on, it’s something that you can’t forget.” She spoke of her anger at hearing that Malvo had laughed when he heard how her brother’s lawnmower kept going after he had been shot. Her brother had a fiancÈe and was planning to be married in the spring and have children. The next witness was Larry Meyers, Dean Meyers’ older brother, who said his brother “was probably my best friend.” He told the jury how his son knocked at the door at 4:30 a.m. to tell him his brother had been shot and killed. “Dean lived in the shadow of a sniper,” Larry Meyers said, telling the jury that Dean Meyers had been shot by a sniper in Vietnam and won the Purple Heart. Since Dean’s death, Larry Meyers told the jury, his mother died and his father moved into an assisted-living facility. He read a part of a tribute he had written for his brother for a memorial dinner. Myrtha Charlot Cinada,the daughter of Pascal Charlot, was the next witness. She described her father as a warm man who loved his family. They would have dinner together every Sunday. “He likes to joke and he likes to help people out,” Cinada said. Her children “loved to see Grandpa.” “His life was stolen,” she said in a quavering voice, and then began to cry. “Would like to say Malvo is evil. You’re insane because you took my father’s life.” After each witness testified, Cooley rose and in a soft voice apologized and wished their families well.
--- Click here for yesterday's coverage.
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