Hedging Bets With a Montgomery Jury

The Maryland trial of John Allen Muhammad, now in its fourth day in the county that was the epicenter of the 2002 sniper attacks, might seem like a textbook example of a case that the defense would want moved to another jurisdiction.

It was here for three horrifying weeks that residents, many of them now potential jurors, found their lives defined by the killers' indiscriminate rampage. Even more than most high-profile cases, where the concern is that mere publicity might taint a jury pool, the attacks by their nature touched people deeply -- across the region, but nowhere more than in Montgomery.

The jury candidates have included a former federal agent who was at the periphery of the investigation, a rental car branch manager whose boss grew up next to one of the victims, and a college professor who teaches a relative of another victim. Countless others said they knew well the gas stations and parking lots where victims fell.

And yet Muhammad's public defenders, whom he fired a month ago, never asked that the trial be moved.

Montgomery County Public Defender Paul B. DeWolfe Jr. declined this week to comment on that strategic decision, but lawyers not involved in the case -- opening statements are expected today -- said yesterday that a jury in Montgomery might be more favorable to the defense than a jury picked elsewhere.

Although another jurisdiction would probably produce jurors who felt less connected to the crimes, these lawyers said, that advantage would not outweigh the risk inherent in drawing a jury in what might be a more conservative county.

"You've got a much more balanced mix of folks, I think, in Montgomery County, and clearly there are some rural counties to which you might be transferred that probably would be less balanced," said Robert C. Bonsib, whose analysis was similar to that of several other lawyers.

The defense must also hope for jurors not biased by the fact that Muhammad, 45, has been convicted and sentenced to die in Virginia. Lee Boyd Malvo, now 21, was convicted in Virginia of helping Muhammad and has been sentenced to life in prison. He is in the late stages of plea negotiations with Maryland prosecutors, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

Richard A. Finci, past president of the Maryland Criminal Defense Attorneys' Association, said jurors in Montgomery are generally well educated and "intellectually rigorous enough to set aside what they've heard and listen to what they hear in court."

"The jurors of Montgomery County are, as far as I'm concerned, some of the best jurors in the state," Finci said. "I think you're better off in Montgomery County than in many other places."

Even so, Muhammad has lately complained that he may not be able to get a fair trial in Montgomery, only to be rebuffed by Judge James L. Ryan. His new standby attorneys said yesterday that he may move for a mistrial depending on the composition of the jury.

After a marathon three days of jury selection in which several hundred candidates were interviewed, Ryan by late yesterday had picked 80 who he said were capable of deciding the case based only on the evidence presented in court.

They were picked from a county where, for three weeks, people stayed indoors when they could and zig-zagged down sidewalks when they couldn't, and where people feared that pumping gas might land them in a sniper's scope.

For many, the request that they set those memories aside was too much to ask.

"You are a filthy murderer," jury candidate Mary Dimsey told Muhammad yesterday, before being swiftly dismissed. "You deserve to die."

Outside the courtroom, she elaborated. "His guilt is obvious," said Dimsey, a middle-aged woman who recalled the terror she felt for herself and her daughter during the attacks. "Anybody who says he comes in without an opinion is not telling the truth."

Another potential juror, Karen Cirrito, was passed over before Ryan asked a single question because of a note she had written on a survey intended to ferret out anyone who might bring a bias to the case: "He's a terrorist."