Insanity

CHESAPEAKE, Va. - Testimony ended yesterday in the capital murder trial of Lee Boyd Malvo after two psychologists for the prosecution told jurors that the teen-ager was not mentally ill when he took part in the sniper attacks that gripped the Washington area in fear last year. The defense and prosecution rested by late in the day, and Fairfax County Circuit Judge Jane Marum Roush told jurors that Malvo's fate could be in their hands as early as today. They will decide if he is guilty, innocent or not guilty by reason of insanity on two counts of capital murder and a weapons charge.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. -- Unable to distinguish between right and wrong, Lee Boyd Malvo met the standard for being legally insane when he participated in last year's deadly sniper rampage, a Maryland psychiatrist for his defense testified yesterday. "From Day One, I thought he met the legal criteria for being legally insane in Virginia," Dr. Neil Blumberg told the jurors in the capital murder trial. Blumberg said that Malvo had a mental disease that made him "unable to distinguish right from wrong and was unable to resist the impulse to commit the offense."

CHESAPEAKE, Va. - Consumed with righting racial inequality and injustice, sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo became yesterday the latest young defendant to use the film The Matrix as part of an insanity defense to explain killings that seem to have no clear explanation. The 1999 film has been used, with some success, in at least three other murder cases in which young defendants attempted to justify their crimes with allusions to the movie's philosophy that the world people live in is only a dream sequence controlled by a computer.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. - Crying as he spoke wistfully of an angelic tyke in Jamaica, the father of teen-age sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo testified that the last time he saw his son, the boy was a polite, loving child doing well in school. "Lee was my pride son. I love him very much," Leslie Malvo testified, mostly through an interpreter. His words were frequently interrupted as he wept into a handkerchief about his "beautiful, handsome, obedient, manageable" child. Leslie Malvo, the first defense witness, laid the groundwork for the 60 or so defense witnesses jurors will hear.

Hamlet: Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never Hamlet: If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away, And when he's not himself does wrong Laertes, Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it. Who does it, then? His madness ...- Hamlet, Act V, Scene II Lee Boyd Malvo hopes to go where Patty Hearst, David Berkowitz, Jack Ruby and Andrea Yates could not. Each of those other high-profile defendants pleaded insanity as a defense against grave criminal charges. Each of them failed. Instead of the hospital ward they sought, every one of them ended up in a prison cell.

FAIRFAX, Va. -- Lawyers for sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo will present an insanity defense at the teen-ager's trial next month, contending that Malvo was brainwashed by his alleged accomplice, John Allen Muhammad, and could not tell right from wrong. "This case is so bizarre and the degree of indoctrination is so great that we would be remiss if we didn't let a jury consider this issue," Craig S. Cooley, one of Malvo's two lead attorneys, said outside the Fairfax courthouse while the insanity plea was being filed.

It has been 14 months since Baltimore talk-radio listeners heard the last politically charged comments offered by "Helga from Westminster." Today, the man accused of killing her is to go on trial. Helga Nicholls' former son-in-law is to stand trial on first-degree murder and weapons charges in Carroll County Circuit Court. Leon A. Costley Jr., accused of stabbing to death the woman who was described as the best-known caller to Baltimore talk-radio programs, has filed pleas of not guilty and not criminally responsible by reason of insanity.

Citizens group backs increase in transfer tax After six weeks of discussion and at least seven proposals, a Howard County citizens committee created to find ways to pay for new schools voted 12-3 in favor of raising the real estate transfer tax by half a percentage point. The three members who voted against the increase, proposed last year by the Robey administration, were Patricia Smallwood, president of the county real estate association, and Republican appointees Steven H. Adler and Ananta Hejeebu.

An Ellicott City teen-ager accused of fatally poisoning a friend by spiking his soda with cyanide filed an insanity plea in the case yesterday. Lawyers filed legal notice claiming that Ryan T. Furlough, 18, was not criminally responsible "by reason of insanity" for the death of 17-year-old Benjamin Edward Vassiliev in January. "It's certainly one of the defenses we're considering in our representation of Ryan," attorney Joseph Murtha said after a brief hearing in Howard County Circuit Court.

An Ellicott City teen-ager accused of fatally poisoning a friend by spiking his soda with cyanide filed an insanity plea in the case yesterday. Lawyers filed legal notice claiming that Ryan T. Furlough, 18, was not criminally responsible "by reason of insanity" for the death of 17-year-old Benjamin Edward Vassiliev in January. "It's certainly one of the defenses we're considering in our representation of Ryan," attorney Joseph Murtha said after a brief hearing in Howard County Circuit Court.