A Montgomery County judge denied Lee Boyd Malvo’s motion to vacate his guilty plea for six murders during the 2002 DC Sniper Attacks, deferring his re-sentencing until he completes his Virginia prison sentence.
According to the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office, “Today in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, MD, the Honorable Sharon Burrell ruled in favor of the State and denied a motion to vacate the guilty plea of convicted murderer Lee Boyd Malvo.
On October 10, 2006, Malvo pleaded guilty to six counts of first-degree murder for the shooting deaths of six victims, Sonny Buchanan, Conrad Johnson, Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, James Martin, Sarah Ramos, and Premkumar Walekar. The fatal shootings occurred in the fall of 2002 and are included in what has become widely referred to as the DC Sniper Attacks. Malvo was sentenced to six life sentences without the possibility of parole to run consecutively to each other and consecutively to the four life sentences he is currently serving in Virginia.
Due to a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions about juveniles and sentences of life without the possibility of parole, the Maryland Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that Malvo must receive a new sentencing hearing. Since the State lacks the ability to transport Malvo from Virginia’s custody to the state of Maryland, today Judge Burrell stated that there are two options for the re-sentencing: either a virtual hearing or a hearing at the time of completion of his Virginia sentence. The defendant has declined to consent to a virtual hearing. Today the Judge ruled that the matter will be deferred until Malvo has completed serving his prison sentence in Virginia. She issued a bench warrant to serve as a detainer should he be released in the future.
State’s Attorney John McCarthy and Assistant State’s Attorney Seth Zucker handled prosecution of this matter.
Malvo’s co-defendant, John Allen Muhammad was sentenced to death and executed in Virginia in 2009.”