MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. — The case of D.C. sniper Lee Boyd Malvo was back in a Montgomery County courtroom on Tuesday. Maryland courts have been working to figure out how to give Malvo a new sentence due to a 2012 Supreme Court ruling.
During Tuesday's hearing, a judge heard a motion to vacate Malvo's 2006 plea agreement, which argued the sentence was illegal under the Eighth Amendment. The judge denied the motion to vacate Malvo's six murder convictions in Maryland.
At 17, Malvo was sentenced to life sentences in Maryland for the six Montgomery County victims killed in the 2002 sniper shootings.
A lawyer for the State of Maryland said the victims' families were asking for the resentencing to be delayed until after Malvo finishes serving his four life sentences in Virginia. That isn’t likely to happen soon.
But the judge said that isn’t possible due to a 2012 Supreme Court decision that said children cannot be sentenced to life without parole unless a judge considers whether their actions were a result of “transient immaturity.”
Malvo was arrested alongside John Allen Muhammad after the pair terrorized the D.C. area for weeks in 2002.
“Every time there was another shooting, it was a really sick, unexplainable feeling, really,” said retired Supervisory Special Agent April Carroll in a 2022 interview with WUSA. “It was just, 'Oh my God, we have to catch these guys. We can't have more killings and shootings.'”
Ultimately, Malvo and Muhammad shot 16 people, 10 of whom died from their injuries. Both were captured in Maryland in October 2002.
Muhammed was sentenced to death and executed in Virginia in 2009. Malvo ultimately pleaded guilty to six counts of first degree murder in Montgomery County.
The resentencing does not mean that Malvo would be released.
Following Tuesday's hearing, resentencing was delayed indefinitely.