How Did John Allen Muhammad's Death

After the events that transpired during 9/11 and with war looming no one thought trouble would come from within our country again, John Allen Muhammad made that possible by terrorizing the Washington D.C. area in 2002 with his protégé Lee Boyd Malvo. With nothing in his life and with his family gone, for some odd reason, John Allen Muhammad thought the answer to his dilemma would be to have him and his protégé kill random people. They murdered ten people and wounded a few others from John’s make shift sniper nest in the trunk of his car before being caught by police after their near four week killing spree (Biography, John). John Allen Muhammad was born John Allen Williams in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1960. After high school he married Carol
LaRuffa. On September 5, 2002, as he was entering his car he was shot six times and was robbed of his brief case full of money and his laptop. One of his employees claimed that he had been shot by a young perpetrator, LaRuffa survived the shooting and nearby the scene there was evidence of Malvo’s DNA (Clark Prosecutor). Soon after the incident in Clinton, Claudine Parker and Kelly Adams were shot outside the Zelda Road ABC Liquor Store in Montgomery, Alabama. Parker died from a gunshot through the spinal column and through her lung and Adams was shot through her teeth damaging her vocal card, as well as some severed nerves in her left shoulder. Malvo went to the two women and started going through their purses, a police car came to scene to find Malvo and gave chase, he managed to escape the police car. After Malvo escaped, Police found a catalog and a .22 caliber revolver with his finger prints on them (Clark Prosecutor). Despite all the damage she underwent, Kelly Adams survived her shooting, police were able to deduce that both women were shot with a Bushmaster rifle One of the next killings was on October 22, 2002 at 5:20 pm a Michael’s art supply store, in Aspen Hills, Maryland, no one was killed or injured, but about an hour later a 55 year old program analyst named James Martin, was shot and killed at a Shoppers Food Warehouse grocery store in Glenmont,
The prosecutor in charge was Doug Gansler, Muhammad waived his right to counsel and decided to represent himself, soon after giving his opening statement he requested his right to counsel. The prosecution decided to bring up charges including murder, conspiracy, terrorism, conspiracy, and illegal use of a firearm (Clark Prosecutor). The evidence the prosecution provided included more than 130 eye witnesses and 400 pieces of evidence that shows that Muhammad made Malvo commit the shootings. The defense argued to drop the capital punishment charge on Muhammad for lack of evidence that Muhammad pulled the trigger because the finger prints that were on the rifle belonged to Malvo. Muhammad argued that because he did not pull the trigger that killed Dean Meyer, then moved to remove the death penalty charges. He goes on to argue that “the trial court should have dismissed the indictment for its failure to indict him for murder in the second degree rather than capital murder because of the lack of allegations that he was the triggerman.” On November 17, 2003 Muhammad was convicted of all four charges and after a five-hour deliberation, the jury decided to issue the death penalty (Clark Prosecutor). In 2005 the Virginia Supreme Court decided to grant the jury’s suggestion to give Muhammad the death penalty, because his actions were considered an act of terrorism. The jury also deduced that