Malvo Indicted For Sniper Slaying
A grand jury indicted 17-year-old Lee Boyd (a.k.a. John Lee) Malvo on two counts of capital murder in last fall's sniper shootings, setting the stage for a death penalty trial.
The indictment, issued Tuesday and made public Wednesday, also includes one count of using a firearm in a murder. Both capital murder counts stem from the Oct. 14 slaying of FBI agent Linda Franklin.
The indictment officially marks the transfer of Malvo's case to adult court. A juvenile court judge ruled last week that Malvo could be tried as an adult, making him eligible for the death penalty if convicted of capital murder.
No date had been set for Malvo's arraignment.
Malvo and John Allen Muhammad, 42, are accused of killing 13 people and wounding five in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. They are being tried first in Virginia because its laws allow the best opportunities for the death penalty.
The grand jury granted Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney Robert F. Horan's request for capital murder indictments under two statutes: one prohibiting the killing of more than one person in a three-year period, and an anti-terrorism law.
Also Tuesday, a judge dismissed efforts by Malvo's guardian to obtain police documents about the deadly shooting spree.
The guardian, Todd Petit, argued that a provision in juvenile law gave him the right to seek a wide range of records from police and other agencies that had documents about Malvo. Prosecutors contend the information was being sought prematurely before the trial.
Muhammad is scheduled to go on trial in October in neighboring Prince William County for the slaying of Dean Meyers at a Manassas gasoline station.
CBS News Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen reports the indictment was a foregone conclusion after Malvo's judge in juvenile court ruled last week that there was probable cause to try him as an adult.
That is the same standard the grand jury had to work with; what was good enough for the judge was bound to be good enough for grand jurors.
Malvo's attorneys have known since they came on board that this case ultimately would be tried with the death penalty as a possibility.
After Malvo is arraigned in the next day or so, Cohen expects to see the case heat up, with some very important pre-trial motions filed just as soon as a trial date is set.
These motions will ask the judge, for example, to preclude the defendant's statements from being used against him at trial. How those motions get resolved will largely dictate how the case comes out.
At the preliminary hearing last week, Horan presented evidence including fingerprints from the Bushmaster rifle used in the killings and handwriting from two notes penned by the sniper demanding $10 million, which Horan claimed linked Malvo to the shootings.