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Maryland’s highest court Judge Robert McDonald recently ordered that D.C. sniper Lee Boyd Malvo be resentenced.
According to CNN, Judge McDonald ruled on Aug. 26 that Malvo be resentenced after being convicted in the D.C. serial sniper attacks that killed ten people. The Maryland Court of Appeals reportedly based its recent ruling on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision about juvenile offenders.
“We hold only that the Eighth Amendment requires that he receive a new sentencing hearing at which the sentencing court, now cognizant of the principles elucidated by the Supreme Court, is able to consider whether or not he is constitutionally eligible for life without parole under those,” the judge said.
The Supreme Court’s decision indicated that the Eighth Amendment prohibits life sentences without parole for juveniles “if a sentencing court determines that the offender’s crime was the result of transient immaturity, as opposed to permanent incorrigibility. However, Judge McDonald added that it’s unclear if the lower court concluded that Malvo couldn’t become a changed man.
In 2002, the then-17-year-old and John Allen Muhammad, 41, reportedly began a three-week shooting spree in the U.S. capital and Virginia Beltway area in October 2002. As such, he was sentenced to life without parole in Maryland and Virginia and is serving the time in the latter’s Red Onion State Prison.
It “may be an academic question in Mr. Malvo’s case,” Judge McDonald said. “[H]e would first have to be granted parole in Virginia before his consecutive life sentences in Maryland even begin.”
On the other hand, Muhammad was reportedly executed in November 2009 in Virginia for partaking in the shootings.
In 2021, Maryland and Virginia reportedly established legislation eliminating life sentences without parole for juveniles. As a result, individuals in Maryland convicted as juveniles can now file a motion to lower their sentence if they served at least 20 years.