Maryland Supreme Court cited 2012 US Supreme Court decision barring mandatory life sentences for juveniles

Lee Boyd Malvo, the Jamaica-born United States (US) sniper convict, is to be re-sentenced due to a 2012 US Supreme Court decision barring mandatory life sentences for juveniles.

This is based on the Maryland Supreme Court ruling in his favour, which upholds that a juvenile cannot be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, if the crime reflected “transient immaturity” rather than “permanent incorrigibility”.

Malvo, now 37, and John Allen Muhammed, then 41, were convicted in 2002 of killing four people in Virginia and six people in Maryland during a three-week, three-state rampage that also included Washington DC. The murder spree claimed the lives of 10 people.

Malvo was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release in 2006, the toughest possible punishment in Maryland, while Muhammad was sentenced to death and was executed in Virginia in 2009. However, the court stated that Malvo’s release from custody was highly unlikely because he is also serving four separate life sentences for the murders in Virginia and would have to be paroled there first.

No date set for re-sentencing

The court ordered that Malvo be re-sentenced, but no date has been set. Maryland public defender Kiran Iyer, who represented Malvo, argued that her client was 17 at the time of the shootings, and as such should benefit from Maryland’s new law allowing prisoners convicted as juveniles to seek release after serving at least 20 years.

However, Montgomery County State Attorney ,John McCarthy told the court that he will continue to seek the maximum sentences for Malvo.

“I don’t know if he will ever get out of Virginia, if we will ever see him,” McCarthy declared.

McCarthy however added that “we will seek sentences that would keep him locked up in Maryland for life if he ever did make it here”.

Judge Robert N. McDonald wrote in the majority ruling that, “he (Malvo) would first have to be granted parole in Virginia before his consecutive life sentences in Maryland even begin”.

The judge also wrote that, “ultimately, it is not for this court to decide the appropriate sentence for Mr Malvo or whether he should ever be released from his Maryland sentences. 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 decisions”.

Malvo is currently serving his time at the Red Onion State Prison in Virginia.