Muhammad loses his last appeal in Maryland

Court affirms decision to prevent testimony from Alabama witness

Muhammad and his then teenage accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo were sentenced to life in prison without parole in Maryland for six sniper deaths in Montgomery County. Muhammad faces the death penalty in Virginia for his conviction there. Malvo, who was 17 at the time of the October 2002 sniper shootings, is serving a life sentence in Virginia for his part in the spree that killed 10 people and wounded three others in the Washington region.

Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said the Court of Appeals ruling brings the case to a close in Maryland.

‘‘Our continued prayers and condolences go to the friends and family of the victims and we hope that the court’s ruling will provide them some comfort,” McCarthy said.

Prosecutors called family members to let them know the decision, he said.

‘‘The case was tried brilliantly the first time, but it is a huge undertaking to try a case again,” McCarthy said.

An attorney who served as Muhammad’s standby counsel after Muhammad fired his public defenders to represent himself said he was ‘‘disappointed” by the Court of Appeals’ decision.

‘‘There were several issues raised in the appeal that are fundamental issues that quite frankly the Court of Special Appeals decided wrongly,” Baltimore attorney J. Wyndal Gordon said. ‘‘My reason to be in this case was to protect the process,” Gordon said. ‘‘I think the die had already been cast in terms of the outcome, but I was concerned about the fairness of the process. The Court of Appeals has rubberstamped an unfair process. And people think it is OK because it’s John Muhammad.”

In its 154-page ruling, the Court of Special Appeals compared Muhammad to the Victorian London serial killer Jack the Ripper. The judges supported Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge James Ryan’s decision to deny Muhammad the chance to call Clyde Wilson of Alabama, whom Gordon said could provide ‘‘exculpatory evidence” of Muhammad’s involvement in a shooting.

Muhammad, who served as his own lawyer, had not included him on a witness list.

In addition, the testimony Wilson would have offered, that he saw a white man running away from a shooting in Alabama, was countered by the testimony of a police officer who also chased the shooter, and by Malvo, who is African American, that he was the shooter who was chased.

‘‘The entire Montgomery, Alabama, episode was simply one of many ‘other crimes’ to help confirm the identification of Muhammad and Malvo as the Montgomery County, Maryland killers,” the Court of Special Appeals had ruled. ‘‘That identification of Muhammad and Malvo as the killers was proved in so many ways that the casting of the slightest shadow on one of the ‘other crimes’ was self-evidently inconsequential in the extreme.”