Muhammad's Six Convictions Upheld in Md.

Judge Compares Blanket of Fear To That Cast by Jack the Ripper

A Maryland appeals court affirmed sniper John Allen Muhammad's six Montgomery County murder convictions yesterday, saying he and his accomplice subjected the Washington region to "three weeks of inexpressible terror" in 2002.

Writing for a unanimous three-judge panel from Maryland's Court of Special Appeals, Judge Charles E. Moylan Jr. dismissed an appeal filed by the Maryland public defender's office. Muhammad, already sentenced to death in Virginia, was tried and convicted in 2006 in Montgomery, the epicenter of the attacks.

At the outset of the opinion, Moylan wrote that the fear that gripped the region in October 2002 was a "fear as paralyzing as that which froze the London district of Whitechapel in 1888," when five prostitutes were slain by a serial killer. Moylan concludes 152 pages later: "Jack the Ripper has never yet been brought to justice. The Beltway Snipers have been."

Muhammad, 46, and Lee Boyd Malvo, 22, were each convicted in Virginia on one count of first-degree murder. Malvo is serving a sentence of life without possibility of parole.

The Maryland appeals court rejected arguments that the trial judge in Montgomery, James L. Ryan, erred by allowing Muhammad to defend himself, by not giving his former defense attorneys a "meaningful opportunity" to prove that he was not competent to stand trial and by not allowing the defense to call certain witnesses.

J. Wyndal Gordon, one of the lawyers who advised Muhammad, faulted the appeals court's ruling. He said Muhammad should have been permitted to call as a witness a man who saw a gunman run from a shooting scene in Alabama, an attack that authorities attribute to Muhammad and Malvo. That witness would have testified that the gunman was not black, he said. Malvo and Muhammad are black.

"I'm shocked that the court upheld the lower court's decision to not allow eyewitness testimony from a material witness," Gordon said.