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 Judge overrules defense objections, sets November trial date
FAIRFAX, Virginia (CNN) -- A judge Tuesday set a November 10 trial date for Lee Boyd Malvo, the teenage suspect in last fall's Washington, D.C.-area sniper shootings. Fairfax County Circuit Judge Jane Marum Roush overruled objections by defense attorney Michael Arif, who said he couldn't be ready by that time. A grand jury on January 21 indicted Malvo, 17, on two counts of capital murder, one of which includes a terrorism charge, in the October 14 death of FBI employee Linda Franklin. Franklin, 47, was shot in the head as she loaded items into her car outside a Home Depot hardware store in Falls Church, Virginia. Malvo could be sentenced to death if convicted of capital murder. He also faces a third count of using a firearm in a murder. The grand jury granted a request by Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney Robert Horan for capital murder indictments against Malvo under two statutes: one prohibiting the killing of more than one person in a three-year period, and the other an anti-terrorism law. On Monday, Roush decided cameras would not be allowed in the trial. Virginia law allows cameras in the courtroom at the judge's discretion. At a preliminary hearing in juvenile court earlier in January, prosecutors presented evidence linking a rifle found in Malvo's possession with the Franklin shooting and with others.
But there were apparently no witnesses who can place Malvo at any of those shootings. Malvo and John Allen Muhammad, 42, are accused of killing 13 people and wounding five in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. They are being tried first in Virginia because its laws allow the best opportunities for the death penalty. Mohammad is to stand trial in neighboring Prince William County, Virginia, in October for the shooting of Dean Harold Meyers at a gas station in Manassas on Oct. 9, 2002. Malvo's birth certificate lists his name as Lee Boyd Malvo. The charging documents in the Franklin case identify the suspect as Lee Boyd Malvo. Muhammad, the other suspect in the case, has called him John Lee Malvo. Fairfax County Circuit Judge Jane Marum Roush overruled objections by defense attorney Michael Arif, who said he couldn't be ready by that time.
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