Conspiracy All Around, Sniper Insists

3-Hour Closing Speech Mentions Lies, Bible

Sniper John Allen Muhammad invoked Groucho Marx and the Bible and declared his innocence during an hours-long, wide-ranging closing argument yesterday in his Montgomery County trial.

He compared his plight to that of Martin Luther King Jr. and challenged the jury not to assume his guilt based on his looks.

"How do you know when a person is innocent?" Muhammad asked. "How do they look?"

If he looks remorseless, he said, it's because he is. "The person who's done nothing wrong should have no remorse," he said.

Muhammad spoke for more than three hours defending himself against charges that he murdered six people in Montgomery County during the October 2002 sniper shootings, which killed 10 and wounded three in the Washington region. He has already been convicted and condemned to death in Virginia.

After closing arguments by Muhammad and prosecutors, the jurors spoke together briefly and told the judge that they will begin deliberations Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, Muhammad, 45, wearing a tan suit, sat impassively as Assistant State's Attorney Vivek Chopra called him a "coward" who prowled the county's streets looking for "regular citizens, like you, like me, like anyone in this gallery" to shoot from afar with a powerful rifle.

Chopra said Muhammad was a "pathetic" man who made "godlike" decisions that silenced several lives and devastated the victims' loved ones.

Ola Martin-Border, sister of victim James D. Martin, is now an only child, he noted, talking about the relatives' loss. Denise Johnson, wife of Conrad Johnson, is now a widow.

" 'Call me God,' indeed," Chopra said, referring to the preface the snipers used to communicate with police while they were at large.

Chopra briefly reminded the jury of the testimony of Muhammad's accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, 21 -- the pinnacle of the trial. He agreed to plead guilty to the six slayings and testified for the state this week.

"Mr. Malvo is an admitted killer," Chopra said. "There is no getting around that. But he was also a boy. He was 15 years old, abandoned by his mother, abandoned by his father," a boy whose chance encounter with Muhammad in Antigua created "the perfect storm."