A federal judge in Virginia ruled that the life sentences imposed when Lee Boyd Malvo was a teenager were unconstitutional.
WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Virginia on Friday ruled that a man who terrorized this region 15 years ago as the so-called Beltway Sniper must be resentenced because the life sentences imposed when he was a teenager are unconstitutional.
Judge Raymond A. Jackson of the Federal District Court in Norfolk, Va., ordered two state courts to hold new sentencing hearings for Lee Boyd Malvo, who was 17 when he was sentenced in 2002.
Mr. Malvo and an older man, John A. Muhammad, went on a horrific shooting spree in 2002 that left at least 10 people dead in Washington, and in its Maryland and Virginia suburbs. The random nature of the shootings, which spread out over three weeks, amplified the terror; schools kept children inside and people stayed indoors, for fear of becoming the next victims.
Mr. Muhammad was sentenced to death and was executed at a Virginia state prison in 2009. Mr. Malvo was convicted of one count of murder at a trial in Virginia, and also entered into a plea agreement; in both cases he received life sentences without parole.
Judge Jackson based his ruling on a 2012 Supreme Court decision in an Alabama case that found the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment barred juveniles from being sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Although that case came 10 years after Mr. Malvo’s sentencing, the judge wrote that the constitutional questions raised by the Malvo case were “so fundamental” that the Supreme Court’s decision needed to be applied retroactively.
“Indeed, ” the judge wrote, “it is doubtful that there exists a public policy more foundational than those safeguarding the constitutional due process by which the state deprives citizens of their life and liberty.”
