CNN has an interesting article giving some of the grounds for appeal that could be raised by John Allan Muhammad (convicted and sentenced to death in the DC/Beltway Sniper case).
See piece here.
Some good points are raised - particularly about the prejudicial evidence (I think it was a major mistake to allow victim's family members to testify about their grief during the trial phase). I doubt that this will be sufficient, however. The other two arguments are the triggerman rule (Muhammad has never actually been proven to be the triggerman - can he be found to be within the meaning of the Virginia death penalty statute even though he has not been proven to ever pull the trigger, but was an accessory in every other way? My guess is that the Courts will not be bothered by this), and murder-as-terrorism rule. Can regular extortionary murder count as an act of terrorism?
These appeals will be entertaining and should provide some good debate (and I even agree with the arguments being made). But given that they have and plan to take multiple cracks at getting the death penalty (due to multiple jurisdictions, I feel reasonably comfortable that Muhammad and Malvo will be executed. I also simply do not have faith that the courts will handle this as they should.
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