News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. July 6, 2018: Virginia’s Attorney General, Mark Herrin, has filed an appeal against a ruling allowing for the re-sentencing of Jamaican-born, convicted sniper killer, Lee Boyd Malvo.
Herring filed the appeal after a Fourth Circuit ruling allowed for the resentencing of Malvo, one of two “DC Snipers,” who was 17 at the time of the murders.
Malvo and John Allen Muhammad, then 41, killed 17 people in a crime spree that terrorized the suburbs of the nation’s capital in the fall of 2002.
Muhammad was sentenced to death and executed in 2009. Malvo struck a deal and was sentenced to four life sentences for his crimes in Virginia though he faced charges in other states as well.
But in a 2012 ruling, Miller v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court forbid life sentences for minors, and that has given Malvo a chance to reopen his legal case.
The Fourth Circuit granted the resentencing late last month in a 25-page opinion written by U.S. Circuit Judge Paul Niemeyer, a Reagan appointee.
But AG Herring has pushed back at the court’s decision, saying “Malvo remains a convicted mass murderer who terrorized an entire region with his heinous and cold-blooded killings.”
“I will keep working to ensure that he faces justice and serves the sentences that were imposed,” he added in the motion.
The Virginia Supreme Court, Herring said, does not include life without parole in its mandatory sentencing guidelines for homicides and therefore is not impacted by Miller.
