Wrong killer shown mercy
Omar Khadr and Lee Boyd Malvo, each guilty of committing murder in his teens, were both groomed to kill by their fathers.
Scarborough-born Khadr, Islamic jihadist, was instructed in bombmaking; Malvo, plucked from a Pentecostal school in Antigua, trained on the firing range.
The former tossed a grenade during a firefight in Afghanistan that killed a U.S. medic. It is unknown how many others — if, indeed, any — died as a result of his landmine handiwork, whether soldiers or civilians.
The latter aimed through the near idiot-proof scope of a Bushmaster rifle, picking off random targets from a shooting platform built into the trunk of a blue Chevrolet Caprice.
One spent a decade in Guantanamo and was returned to Canada last weekend, eventually to be freed, whether sooner (on parole as early as next spring) or later (in 2018, after serving all the custody time remaining on a plea-bargained eight-year sentence imposed by a U.S. military tribunal). The other will die in prison, condemned to life without parole.
America, for all its luminous principles of law and justice, can be unforgiving unto dark perpetuity. It is a posture some Canadians would like to see duplicated here. But the United States has also been deeply wounded in ways many Canadians fail to appreciate. Some of it, however, seems a remnant of rugged frontier justice, with little patience for the rehabilitation possibilities of its worst offenders, denied any second chance. Across the U.S., 2,570 felons convicted as minors (under 18) are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole.
The only mercy ever shown to Malvo — better known as the Beltway Sniper — was that a jury rejected the death sentence at his 2004 trial in Chesapeake, Va. Every member of that panel had been “death-certified,’’ meaning they’d professed the ability to impose a death sentence during jury selection. Charged with 10 homicides (three more wounded) during a three-week killing spree, Malvo was tried on one specific murder — the killing of FBI analyst Linda Franklin, whose head was blown off as she stood by her car in a Home Depot parking lot. Prosecutors picked that homicide so the case would be heard in Virginia, second only to Texas in executions. Also, Virginia was one of 23 states that permitted execution of those who committed capital offences when 16 and 17 years of age. Malvo had been 17, barely one year older than Khadr when the Canadian was captured. With Malvo’s chilling confession tapes played in court — boastful, defiant, laughing — there was never any doubt he would be convicted. But the district attorney wanted him dead. That he failed in this pursuit was a remarkable triumph for the defence team and against all betting odds, given the venue and the horrific crimes. The death sentence needed to be unanimous. At least one person on that jury listened to the tragic story of Malvo’s life and decided: No. In court, as he waited for his fate to be determined, I watched Malvo, child-like, drawing pictures, quite a good artist actually, seemingly disinterested in what was happening. And yes, I felt pity for him, in a way I have never felt pity for Khadr, though I agree he should be paroled quickly, in accordance with Canadian sentencing guidelines, because of time served at Guantanamo. But I spent too much time on the ground with Canadian troops in Afghanistan, rolling across desert and highway inside LAVs, anticipating the next blast, to ever permit compassion for him. And I’ve seen traumatized child solders stumbling out of the bush in the Congo and Uganda after escaping the Lord’s Resistance Army — little girls abducted as sex slaves, boys forced to murder their parents. Khadr was no child soldier. He was a child of Al Qaeda privilege. If neither Khadr nor Malvo had much choice in what they became, how they were manipulated as adolescents by their fathers, only Malvo has finally come to grips with the profound wrongness of his crimes, with an adult’s perspective, laying the blame where it belongs yet not excusing himself for havoc wrought. Malvo’s regret was expressed poignantly in a 10-years-after interview he gave to Josh White of the Washington Post, published a few days ago. “I was a monster,’’ he said. “If you look up the definition, that’s what a monster is. I was a ghoul. I was a thief. I stole people’s lives. I did someone else’s bidding just because they said so. . . . There is no rhyme or reason or sense.’’ By comparison, the taped interview sessions Khadr had with a Pentagon-appointed psychiatrist are entirely self-serving, evasive and without remorse — except for his own circumstances. Nor has he repudiated his father’s ideology. The parallels — one domestic, the other foreign — have always struck me. John Allen Muhammad wasn’t Malvo’s biological father, not even formally his adoptive dad. He scooped the abused teen from a slothful mother who exchanged her son for forged documents that got her into the U.S. illegally. From the beginning, Malvo was in thrall to Muhammad, saw him as his “saviour’’ and never questioned spending up to 10 hours a day on a target range, all part of the army vet’s long-term plan to unleash a blood-spilling blitz.
Obediently, over 23 days in October 2002, Malvo and Muhammad ambushed random, unsuspecting targets around Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia, though the duo would later be tied to at least 11 more shootings. Muhammad’s agenda has never been entirely clear. Malvo believed his “dad’’ was scheming to extort $10 million from the U.S. government, which would be used to establish a Utopian society for black homeless boys in Canada. But court also heard that Muhammad — furious over losing custody of three children to his ex-wife — had plotted to kill her amidst the sniper rampage, a murder that would be attributed to the unknown assassin with no suspicion falling on her former husband. The children would then be returned to him. Muhammad was executed in 2009.
At the Red Onion State Prison in Virginia, Malvo, now 27, spends 23 hours a day in segregation. He is serving six consecutive life sentences, covering other murders to which he admitted in a plea deal after the first trial.
In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, banned capital punishment as unconstitutional for crimes committed under the age of 18. Recently, that court also struck down as “cruel and unusual punishment’’ mandatory life sentences with no possibility of parole for juveniles. But state laws still give judges discretion to impose sentences of 25 years to life.
Malvo will never see the outside of a prison. Unlike Khadr, he won’t ever go home, even if he had one. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.