Muhammad shouts his finale as sniper case grinds to end

ROCKVILLE, Md. — John Allen Muhammad, wild-eyed and sometimes shouting in his closing argument, said Friday that he had been framed for the Washington, D.C.-area sniper slayings, alleging faked evidence ranging from DNA and ballistic tests to maps on his laptop computer that marked shooting scenes with skull-and-crossbones icons.

"They are just nothing but hackers. They just happen to work for the FBI or the CIA," Muhammad said of investigators who examined the computer.

They were just a few of the people Muhammad accused of lying in a rambling, three-hour, 20-minute statement. "Let me tell you a story about the lying prosecutors and the lying policemen, whew, and the story they told," Muhammad said.

Montgomery County Circuit Judge James Ryan frequently cut Muhammad short, upholding prosecution objections that he was straying from the evidence. Muhammad appeared to grow more agitated as his attempts to describe a conspiracy against him were blocked.

Muhammad defended himself in his murder trial over six Maryland slayings, part of the October 2002 sniper shootings that terrified the region.

In their rebuttal, prosecutors dismissed Muhammad's conspiracy theory.

"Why would all these people get together and orchestrate this to come in and testify in court to frame two innocent people?" prosecutor Katherine Winfree asked jurors before they were sent home for the weekend. They were to begin deliberations Tuesday.

Muhammad has been sentenced to death in Virginia for one of the October 2002 sniper shootings, which left 10 people dead and three wounded. His accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, was given a life term in that case.

Malvo, 21, agreed to plead guilty to the same six Maryland murders this week and gave a detailed, inside account of the planning and execution of the sniper shootings.

Maryland prosecutors, seeking a life sentence in the Muhammad case, have billed his second trial as insurance in case the first conviction is ever overturned.

Muhammad, a former Fort Lewis soldier, and Malvo lived in the Tacoma area and in Bellingham before heading east.

They are believed to have killed a woman and are suspects in a separate shooting incident at a synagogue, both in Tacoma.

Malvo also is believed to have shoplifted the assault rifle used in the D.C.-area slayings from Bull's Eye Shooter Supply in Tacoma in 2002.

The Pierce County Prosecutor's Office has said it won't try the men because of their East Coast convictions.

Material from The Seattle Times archive is included in this report.