SNIPER TRIAL Malvo convicted of capital murder

Many theories of the motive have been presented, but none are definitive.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
CHESAPEAKE, Va. -- After 13 hours of deliberations over two days, a jury Thursday convicted Lee Boyd Malvo of two counts of capital murder in the Washington-area sniper spree, after rejecting defense efforts to portray the teenager as the insane puppet of his co-conspirator John Muhammad.
Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Jane Marum Roush accepted the verdicts, and moved the trial into the sentencing phase, in which the jury will decide if Malvo should receive the death penalty or a sentence of life without the possibility of parole -- the only two options after a conviction of capital murder.
"The best thing to do is take a break for the evening and begin tomorrow morning," Roush said.
Malvo, dressed in a canary-yellow button-down shirt, showed no trace of emotion as he sat at the defense table looking straight head when the verdict was read. He told police in a series of confessions after his arrest last year that he expected to face the death penalty for the chilling sniper spree, which left 10 people dead and three injured.
The jury of eight women and four men spent two days deliberating the verdicts, before returning a guilty decision against Malvo for the Oct. 14, 2002, shooting of FBI analyst Linda Franklin at a Fairfax County Home Depot store. They also found him guilty under a new Virginia terrorism statute, which permits the death penalty for someone involved in murders of more than one person in a three-year period.
Malvo was also found guilty of using a firearm in the commission of a felony, which carries a three-year mandatory prison sentence.
Accomplice's case
Malvo's accomplice, 42-year-old former Army Sgt. John Muhammad, was found guilty on similar charges in neighboring Virginia Beach last month. That jury recommended a death sentence.
During the trials of both Muhammad and Malvo, prosecutors and defense lawyers have broached several theories about why the two launched the shooting spree during a three-week period last year but have not presented a definitive or coherent theory.
The shootings began with the killing of Keenya Cook, 18, in Tacoma, Wash., in February 2002. They grew into killings for the cash proceeds held at closing time by the owners of liquor stores in Louisiana and Maryland, then a beauty salon in Alabama, and then the Washington-area sniper attacks, which eventually resulted in a demand that the government pay the killers $10 million to stop the shootings.
Theories of motive
In both the Malvo and Muhammad trials, several motives have been proposed for these deaths, but none of these theories satisfies the total of 19 shootings linked to the pair.
In Muhammad's trial, prosecutors believed the killings were part of an effort by Muhammad to disguise a clever plan to kill his ex-wife and thereby regain custody of his children. Mildred Muhammad moved the children from Washington state to the Washington, D.C., area, and her killing could have been passed off as another victim of the sniper, prosecutors contended.
Prosecutors argued that the reason Cook was shot in the face was that Malvo mistook her for Muhammad's wife, when the teenage baby-sitter opened the front door.
Although Malvo's lawyers acknowledged during this trial that Malvo shot Cook, Malvo vigorously denied in confessions he gave police that the two ever had a plan to kill Mildred Muhammad. Malvo tracked Mildred Muhammad to the Washington suburb of Clinton, Md., in October 2002 and said that both he and Muhammad followed the children without harming her or attempting to kidnap the children.