Car A Star Witness In Sniper Case

The judge in the trial of sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad announced Friday that the jury would be taken to the city jail to see the 1990 Chevrolet Caprice in which Muhammad and fellow suspect Lee Boyd Malvo were arrested last year.

Prosecutors say the former police car, with a specially hinged back seat and notch cut above the rear license plate, was used as a killing platform.

They argue that the suspects could crawl into the trunk from inside the car and fire shots without being seen.

Defense lawyers objected to showing the jury the vehicle, saying that it is an unnecessary duplication of a demonstration made in court Thursday, and that there is no evidence that Muhammad fired from the trunk in any of the sniper shootings.

Muhammad, 42, is on trial in only one of the sniper attacks, the Oct. 9, 2002, shooting death of Dean Harold Meyers at a gasoline station near Manassas. Meyers was one of 10 people shot dead during the sniper spree in the D.C. area. Malvo's trial in another of the shootings is set to start Monday. Both men are charged with capital murder.

A videotape shown Thursday at the trial demonstrated how prosecutors believe the Caprice was used in the attacks. In the video, a police officer crawled into the trunk and fired off a shot through the hole.

Jurors paid particularly close attention to the tape, which played for less than a minute Thursday. Defense attorneys objected, saying it was a faulty re-creation that made maneuvering in the trunk appear simpler than it would have been.

Prosecutors also wheeled into court the back end of another 1990 Caprice to give the jury an idea of how a person might fit into the trunk and use a hole cut from the trunk as a firing platform.

The defense said there is no evidence that anyone saw shots fired from the Caprice's trunk, and that the demonstrations would invite unfair speculation by the jury.

"There's no purpose except it's real emotional and it makes a big splash," said defense attorney Peter Greenspun.

Lead prosecutor Paul Ebert argued that the jury is entitled to draw reasonable inferences from the evidence in the case, which is entirely circumstantial.

"I think it will be helpful to them. I think they're entitled to see it," he said.

In the video, an officer of nearly identical size to Muhammad lifted the seat in his car, wriggled into the trunk, which held the rifle, and squeezed off a shot through the hole.

Defense attorneys pointed out that the trunk was empty in the demonstration, though it had been cluttered when Muhammad and Malvo were arrested last year.

Prince William County crime scene investigator Ralph Daigneau acknowledged under cross-examination that officers had practiced maneuvering into the trunk for about five minutes before the demonstration was filmed.

Defense attorneys were successful Thursday in barring testimony from a State Department official who would have said that Muhammad represented himself as a sniper and expert in urban warfare during a 2001 immigration dispute.

Circuit Judge LeRoy F. Millette Jr. ruled that the testimony was irrelevant, although prosecutor Paul Ebert argued that "anybody who represents himself as a sniper trained in urban warfare is certainly relevant to this case."

Prosecutors also showed jurors a photograph of Muhammad and Malvo at a barbecue in Bellingham, Wash., in April 2002. Malvo wore a T-shirt with cross hairs on it, which prosecutors described as "a sniper designation.