After almost two decades of a serial sniper spree that had left the Washington DC area terrorized and 10 people dead, a Maryland appeals court ruled that Lee Boyd Malvo should be resentenced. Malvo was found to be guilty for his role in the shooting. The Maryland Court of Appeals based its Friday ruling on the US Supreme Court’s guidance on juvenile offenders.

Also Read | Maryland court rules DC-area sniper to be resentenced 

Malvo was 17-year-old when these crimes spread throughout the area, in 2002. He was sentenced to life, without parole, in both Maryland and Virginia. The U.S. Supreme Court, in its later judgments and decisions, held that life without parole for young offenders is denied under the Eighth Amendment “if a sentencing court determines that the offender’s crime was the result of transient immaturity, as opposed to permanent incorrigibility,” Judge Robert McDonald wrote. “It isn’t clear that the sentencing judge reached the latter conclusion in Malvo’s case,” the judge said according to a CNN report. Currently, Malvo is in the Red Onion State Prison. 

Who is Lee Boyd Malvo?

Lee Boyd Malvo, born in February 18, 1985, is a convicted murderer who is one among those held guilty for taking part in a three-week murder spree in Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC. He is also known by the name John Lee Malvo. His parents were Leslie Malvo, a mason, and Una James, a seamstress. 

His parents separated when he was just five, and he was sent to live with his aunt. Later, he reunited with his mother in Antigua. It was in Antigua that Malvo met John Allen Muhammad, who taught Malvo how to use firearms.

It is now known that the intention was to create a number of black “super children”: seventy boys and seventy girls who would locate themselves in the United States from a secret compound in Canada to challenge and stop racial injustice and build a better society from the bottom up. Lee Boyd Malvo, a seventeen-year-old immigrant from Kingston, Jamaica, was “very confident that this could be done,” his court-appointed psychologist reported.

Also Read | Three deadliest sniper attacks in the US

Craig Cooley, who is one of Malvo’s defense attorneys, narrated that Muhammad had convinced him that the $10 million ransom sought from the US government to stop the sniper killings, would be used to set up a utopian society for 140 black homeless children on a Canadian compound. In 2012, Malvo stated that he was harassed sexually by John Allen Muhammad.