This fall, the Supreme Court will have the chance to speak up on an important criminal justice issue as it decides an appeal in the infamous “D.C. Sniper” case. The case is a chance for an increasingly conservative SCOTUS to decide whether it will continue or curtail the recent trend of ramping up leniency in criminal cases involving juvenile offenders.
The Court will be considering an appeal by Lee Boyd Malvo, the then-17-year-old sniper who went on a violent rampage with 41- year-old John Allen Muhammad in 2002, killing 17 people and injuring 10 others. During the weeks when Malvo and Muhammad were at large, the case erupted into public hysteria and media frenzy.
Muhammad was executed in 2009 for his crimes; Malvo was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences without parole in Maryland and four more in Virginia. He now appeals those sentences on the grounds that the law has changed – and that life-without-parole sentences may not have been constitutional for a juvenile offender.
In the years following Malvo’s sentencing, the Supreme Court made some important rulings affecting juveniles convicted of homicide. In 2012, SCOTUS ruled in Miller v. Alabama that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for people under 18 was a violation of the Eighth Amendment. Children, the Court found, are constitutionally different from adults for sentencing purposes. Four years later, SCOTUS ruled in Montgomery v. Louisiana, that the Miller rule applies retroactively.
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7 comments:
He should not be released early. He and his crony had the whole area running scared. He knew very well what he was doing. A lot of innocent people's lived were taken at the hands of this little thug. He should NEVER get out.
The DC snipper case is special, it involves a black Muslim so they are the class that deserves special treatment and special privileges.
How long will he actually live if released, hopefully only a couple of hours. Justice by the people should prevail
Ain't it the truth?
He still has six life sentences running one after the next. Resentence him to twenty years for each. Even if paroled after 10 years of each successive sentence, he'd be almost 70 when released.
He is just a little boy, a young teen when he did this. He was misunderstood all his short life, give him a break. The White folks and their being born into privilege is responsible for those deaths, not him.
Alexandria Cortez
No sympathy to this so called individual. But he must be re-sentenced. It will help to many other prisoners who were younger then him and/or made much less to get their sentences reduced.
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