Jury Votes for Sniper to Be Put to Death

John Allen Muhammad is facing execution for his role in last October's sniper killings around Washington, after a jury voted to sentence the Gulf war veteran to death for both murder and terrorism.

The judge's formal sentencing takes place on February 12 but it is unusual for courts to overrule a death penalty decision, in a state which is second only to Texas in the number of executions it conducts.

The jury in the town of Virginia Beach agreed with prosecutors that the killing spree, in which 10 people were killed in the Washington area over three weeks, amounted to acts of terrorism, under a Virginia law passed after September 11.

Paul Ebert, the chief prosecutor in the case, defended the use of the statute against Muhammad who was not accused of any link with a terrorist group.

"I think it's part of the war on terrorism," Mr Ebert said. "This type of conduct and the attempt to intimidate the government cannot be tolerated here or abroad, so I think from that standpoint on that point the jury got the message and they decided accordingly."

However, the sentencing of Muhammad is likely to provoke a legal challenge to the Virginia terrorism law, which allows the "mastermind" behind an attack to be sentenced to death. His lawyers will almost certainly appeal against the death sentence for murder.

Muhammad's alleged accomplice in the sniper killings, Lee Boyd Malvo, is still on trial elsewhere in Virginia. Lawyers for the Jamaican teenager have argued he was under the sway of the older man.

Despite Virginia's hardline reputation on the death penalty, it became clear yesterday that the jury had initially been split on Muhammad's sentence, and it had taken the weekend to come to a unanimous decision.

After the decision, one of the jurors said she might become an activist against the death penalty as a result of the experience.

One of the original dissenting jurors, Dennis Bowman, told journalists: "On Friday I voted for life imprisonment, and I spent a long weekend thinking about it. Some of the other jurors had said: 'How many bodies do we have to add to this pile we already have?' And I agreed with that."

Mr Bowman said he stayed awake all Sunday night weighing the decision and was ultimately won over to the death penalty because of evidence that Muhammad had plotted an escape attempt from the cells and had shown himself capable of doing further harm.

"With this fellow you can see the wheels turning in his head and somewhere down the road even if you put him in the deepest hole he's going to fabricate an opportunity to harm someone else whether its prison personnel or another inmate," he said.

Juror Elizabeth Young said: "I had always described myself as a capital punishment agnostic. When you actually sit down to consider it and realise what an incredibly serious responsibility it is, I wasn't sure I had enough information."