MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. — One of the snipers in the 2002 D.C.-area sniper shootings may soon be back in a Montgomery County courtroom, and a judge said Monday that she's never seen something like this before.
Maryland's highest court ruled that Lee Boyd Malvo must be re-sentenced because he was a teen at the time of the killings.
A former child sniper – now a 38-year-old convicted murderer – Lee Boyd Malvo is set to be resentenced in Montgomery County.
At a status hearing on Monday, the resentencing of Malvo will be scheduled to take one week and he’s likely to be extradited to Maryland from Virginia. The defense will have one day to present arguments, and the prosecution will have four days, during which the victims families will have to go back into court to give testimony – again.
The lawyer for the State of Maryland said the victims' families are asking that the resentencing be delayed until after Malvo finishes serving his multiple life sentences in Virginia. Which isn’t likely to happen soon.
But the judge said that isn’t possible due to a 2012 Supreme Court decision that said children cannot be sentenced to life without parole unless a judge considers whether their actions were a result of “transient immaturity.”
Malvo was sentenced to life sentences in Maryland for the six Montgomery County victims killed in the 2002 sniper shootings.
He’s currently housed at Red Onion State prison in Wise County, Virginia.
In the hearing Monday, attorneys for both Malvo and the state said that extraditing a serial killer across state lines to be resentenced has not happened before.
The attorney for the State of Maryland says they’ll need to get an extradition order signed by both the governors of Maryland and Virginia, and then figure out where to house Malvo in Montgomery County during the hearing – because there are major security concerns.
That will be decided in an upcoming hearing late this year.
In 2002, Malvo was a 17-year-old who shot people in Maryland, D.C. and Virginia over a 3-week period – terrorizing the region, along with his mentor John Allen Muhammed.
Muhammed was sentenced to death and executed in Virginia in 2009. Malvo ultimately pleaded guilty to six counts of first degree murder in Montgomery County.
The re-sentencing does not mean that Malvo would be released.