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Yesterday (Friday) federal district court judge Raymond Jackson ordered new sentencings for Lee Boyd Malvo.
For those that are too young and for those that don't remember who this man is, Lee Boyd Malvo was part of the DC Sniper duo. In the fall of 2002, he, along with John Allen Muhammad committed several sniper shootings in Virginia, DC, and Maryland. Muhammad and Malvo randomly picked the 10 people they killed and the 3 people they wounded. Their victims were shot @ gas stations, parking lots, on their way to school, etc. The terror finally came to an end after Malvo and Muhammad were caught sleeping in the vehicle they used to drive around and commit their crimes @ a rest stop in Maryland. A jury in Virginia convicted Muhammad, sentenced him to death, and he was executed in Virginia in 2009. Malvo was convicted after 2 separate trials and sentenced to life in prison without parole. The problem, back in 2012, the Supreme Court banned life sentences without parole for juveniles. @ the time that this ruling was handed down, Malvo was appealing his sentencing. Conveniently for him, fast forward to 2016, the Supreme Court deemed that the ruling would be retroactively applied to cases in the appeals process. This led to Judge Jackson's ruling. Thoughts: As many of you know by now, I'm proudly from the state of Virginia, so I recall when this happened very well. I think I was in 6th grade when this happened, 1 of the shootings happened maybe 5 or 10 minutes from my childhood home. The night that this particular shooting happened, I was out with my mom, and I believe my aunt (her sister) was with us, and we were actually in the area where the shooting happened, I don't remember what we were doing, but I can remember riding past where the shooting happened on our way home and seeing all of these police cars and their flashing lights, but we didn't know what had happened until we got home and saw the news. After we found out what happened, I can remember being scared cause the other shootings were in the area, but they were far enough away up north that you could still feel relatively safe because they hadn't come that far south. That night, my mom normally sleeps with her tv on, my grandma would fall asleep with her tv on until it would turn off according to the timer, that night however was different. Our house was silent and pitch black dark, I can remember I couldn't sleep for a couple reasons: 1) I could never fall asleep without my mom's tv being on, 2) I have this issue with silence, it makes me very uncomfortable, I sleep with a fan on cause I need the white noise, 3) There were helicopters flying in the area looking for these men with the brightest spotlights I've ever seen. I don't think @ the time we knew that they were driving around doing what they were doing, plus a card was found in the woods behind the location that the victim was shot @, so authorities believed that they were in the woods, and my childhood home is surrounded by trees, and lastly 4) I was a kid and I was terrified! My house was normally well lit and semi noisy was dark and quiet cause we were afraid that they were in the area and that if we made any indication that we were home, they could come and harm us, it was by far the scariest thing I've experienced. I can remember after the shooting happened, schools were closed, when we went back to school we were told to of course walk with urgency to our buses, and if we heard gunshots we were taught to run in zig zags to decrease the likelihood that we would be hit with a bullet. Shit was very real and very scary. I can remember they closed our schools again cause these men were in the area again and made a call from a gas station pay phone...yeah I said a pay phone! So, as you can see this story came into contact with my life, not in the way that the victim's families were affected, but it happened near my home and my school and it scared me, so it was very important that I did this post. I'm confused as to why this resentencing is necessary based upon his crime. I mean what else would they charge him with? Yeah, he might've been brainwashed, but that still doesn't take away the fact that you murdered innocent people, scared children and parents, all for no reason. I do believe that he deserves to be in prison for life because he took life, multiple lives @ that. I don't support him receiving any other sentence that would allow him to be released, so that he could live his life because his victims don't get to continue with their lives, so why should you?
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