Convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad (news) was regularly whipped with hose pipes and electrical cords and beaten with hammers and sticks by family members during a brutal childhood, according to lawyers trying to save Muhammad from the death penalty.
The lawyers argued in a federal court petition filed this week that the jurors who sent Muhammad to death row for the 2002 sniper spree were improperly barred from hearing most of the evidence of the harsh life Muhammad faced as a child.
Muhammad and his teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo (news), were convicted in 2003 of a random killing spree that left 10 people dead in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia over a three-week span in October 2002 that terrorized the nation's capital region.
Muhammad was sentenced to death and Malvo was sentenced to life in prison.
In their filing Wednesday in U.S. District Court, Muhammad's lawyers detailed much of the evidence that was banned from Muhammad's 2003 trial.
Muhammad's brothers and sisters would have testified that they and Muhammad were regularly beaten by aunts, uncles and grandparents while growing up in Louisiana, when he was known as John Allen Williams.
"These witnesses ... provided heart-wrenching stories of the abuse and neglect Mr. Muhammad suffered as a child - beatings with hoses and electrical cords, denial of food, clothing and basic necessities, and suffering on a scale difficult to imagine," wrote the defense lawyers, James Connell and Jonathan Sheldon.
The evidence was banned because Muhammad refused to be interviewed by the prosecutors' mental-health expert. As punishment, the trial judge, LeRoy F. Millette Jr., barred the defense from putting on any expert testimony of its own during the trial's penalty phase.
Millette's ruling did not technically ban the testimony of Muhammad's brothers and sisters, but trial attorneys Peter Greenspun and Jonathan Shapiro did not want to put the evidence on without testimony from their mental-health expert, Mark Cunningham, to explain the neglect's effect on Muhammad's development, according to the brief.
The appellate lawyers said in their brief that "Muhammad apparently did not want to acknowledge his horrific childhood" and planned to deny any abuse, either on the witness stand himself or in interviews with the government's mental-health expert.
The appellate filing also includes evidence that Muhammad's brain suffered abnormalities that are associated with schizophrenia and other disorders. Among other issues, a psychiatrist who reviewed MRI images of Muhammad's brain found a shrunken cortex, which the psychiatrist believed could have been damaged from childhood beatings and impaired function in other parts of Muhammad's brain.
The psychiatrist's testimony also was banned by Millette's ruling. The appeals lawyers argue, however, that Muhammad's trial lawyers should have used the information to convince Millette that Muhammad was not competent to represent himself.
Muhammad took over his own defense for a disastrous two-day sequence at the start of the trial. During that time, prosecutors presented testimony from a sniper expert from the British army who told jurors that snipers usually work in pairs. The expert's testimony, which went largely unchallenged by Muhammad, proved to be significant since prosecutors argued that Muhammad was equally culpable in the murders even though there was no evidence Muhammad actually pulled the trigger.
The appeal filed this week in federal court is a habeas corpus petition, typically the last round of appeals available to a death row inmate. Barring extraordinary circumstances, Virginia will be free to execute Muhammad if the habeas petition is not granted by either the federal district court judge, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond or the U.S. Supreme Court.
Connell declined comment on the filing, citing rules at the federal courthouse in Alexandria (web|news) that sharply limit lawyers' ability to comment public on cases.
Prince William Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Ebert, who prosecuted Muhammad, did not immediately return a call seeking comment Friday.
By MATTHEW BARAKAT Associated Press Writer
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