Malvo Penalty Phase Continues

The prosecution has rested its case in the sentencing hearing for convicted teenage sniper teenage Lee Malvo.

Prosecutors called several relatives of sniper victims to testify this morning. After a lunch recess, the defense will begin its effort to spare the teenager from the death penalty. Malvo was convicted of capital murder yesterday.

Jurors wept as one by one as wives, husbands amd daughters took the stand to talk about their losses, reports CBS News Correspondent Stacy Case.

During their testimony, Malvo looked down, but showed no emotion.

Friday morning, a woman who lost her father in a Washington-area shooting confronted Malvo from the stand, calling him "evil" as she described the impact of her father's death.

Cinada was one of a half-dozen family members who testified during the sentencing phase of Malvo's trial. Several jurors wept during the emotional testimony, which began with prosecutors playing an emotionally wrenching 911 call in which William Franklin sobs to the dispatcher that his wife, FBI analyst Linda Franklin, was shot in the head.

The tape was excluded during the guilt phase of Malvo's trial, but Circuit Judge Jane Marum Roush ruled it was admissible in the sentencing phase.

Prosecutor Ray Morrogh said the tape demonstrates the vileness of the crime, a necessary factor under Virginia law for the jury to impose a death sentence.

Denise Johnson, whose husband Conrad Johnson was the final victim in the shooting spree, recalled how her husband "used to write little 'I love you' notes on the mirror ... using my $15 lipstick."

"It's a life that was taken for no reason, no reason at all," she told the jury. "His death is a hurt that will never go away."

Prosecutors also presented evidence of an escape attempt Malvo made the day he was arrested in October 2002, to demonstrate that Malvo could pose a future danger.

Defense lawyer Thomas Walsh, who unsuccessfully mounted an insanity defense in the first phase of the trial, asked the jury in his opening statement Friday to remember the difficult circumstances of Malvo's childhood.

Walsh also told the jury that "but for John Muhammad, (Malvo) would not have been here."

Malvo, 18, was convicted for the Oct. 14, 2002, killing Franklin, one of 10 people killed by Malvo and partner John Allen Muhammad during the three-week spree. The jury deliberated for 13 hours over two days before rendering its verdict.

Malvo's lawyers had claimed that Muhammad had brainwashed the teen so thoroughly that he came to believe his father figure was chosen by Allah to begin a new Utopian society in Canada.

Many of the witnesses who testified during the guilt phase of the trial about Malvo's behavior as a child and teenager will also be called during the sentencing phase. It is expected that many will talk about Malvo's difficult upbringing, in which his mother beat him and moved him from home to home, all while he searched for a father figure.

Though the insanity defense failed, the jury has already been introduced to many of the arguments the defense will make during sentencing, said Joseph Bowman, a defense attorney who has handled capital cases in Virginia.

"By putting on all this psychiatric testimony during the guilt phase, they were able to slip in a lot of evidence to the jury about Malvo's childhood and how and why he could have done what he did," Bowman said.

Prosecutors complained frequently during the trial that the insanity defense was simply a red herring that allowed the defense to present testimony that would normally not be allowed in the guilt phase of a trial.

Prosecutors portrayed Malvo as a gleeful and eager triggerman, saying he fired shots from the trunk of a beat-up Chevy while Muhammad plotted the attacks. Muhammad, 42, was convicted of identical charges last month, and his jury recommended the death penalty.

Authorities say the killings were an attempt to extort $10 million from the government. Malvo and Muhammad were the first two people tried under Virginia's post-Sept. 11 terrorism law.

Virginia is one of 21 states that allow the execution people for crimes committed when they were 16 or 17. The state is one of only six that have actually executed a juvenile killer since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

If the Malvo jury recommends death, Roush will have the option to reduce the sentence to life in prison. If the jury decides for life in prison, its decision cannot be changed.