October
25, 2002 12:55 p.m. The
Next Step
What
happens now with “the sniper”?
o,
another follower of the "religion of peace" is found to be a
homicidal thug. Who would have dared imagine it?
Suburban Washington
breathes a collective sigh at the arrests of John Allen Muhammad, 41,
and John Lee Malvo, 17, and the identification of a rifle found in their
possession as the weapon used in ten area murders, as well as three others
in which the victims survived. As excruciating as the investigation up
to now has been, there is much police work left to be done, and in the
circus-like, media-charged atmosphere surrounding this case it will require
discipline to see it through. Local police and federal agents were understandably
jubilant early Thursday when it at last appeared that the three-week rampage
across two states and the District of Columbia had been brought to an
end. Most of the cops assigned to the manhunt will soon return to their
more mundane tasks, but it remains to some of them to shepherd the case
to a successful prosecution and, one hopes, an appointment with the executioner.
Muhammad and Malvo have killed for the sport of it, as coldly and calculatingly
as any murderer you can name, and the thought that they might reach old
age, even as prison inmates, seems profoundly unsatisfying.
Okay, so the crooks
are finally in the cooler. Now what? With the arrests, only half the battle
has been won. There were no eyewitnesses to any of the shootings, no one
who can take the stand to face a jury to say, "They did it. I saw
them do it." But there are hundreds, if not thousands of individual
pieces of evidence that today exist as an ill-defined mass, like so many
colored tiles tossed in a bucket. And when in the deft hands of experienced
detectives and prosecutors they are assembled into a mosaic, they will
offer a picture even more vivid than one drawn from eyewitness testimony.
If the case is properly presented, a jury should have no option but to
convict these men and impose the sentence that even some death-penalty
opponents must surely if only privately wish upon them.
The evidence has
been collected at 13 different crime scenes scattered across Maryland,
Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Other relevant items were found
in Montgomery, Alabama and in Bellingham, Washington, and there will no
doubt be additional searches as detectives retrace the murderous pair's
path during the crime spree and long before. Some cops and prosecutors
may view this case as an opportunity to have their tickets punched on
the road to promotion, but this is not a job for climbers seeking to see
themselves on television. This is a job for the old pros, those who know
how to put a case together and bring it before a jury.
Every cop knows that
the higher one goes in the organization the less one is likely to know
about police work. I have learned through bitter experience that the suits
know almost nothing about the case law regarding search and seizure, and
even less about the nuts and bolts of evidence collection. Now that arrests
have been made, there will be people eager to claim credit and adulation
for the success of the investigation, but if the prosecution is to succeed,
the meddling by the bosses should be discouraged in no uncertain terms.
Everyone has heard the old saw: Success has many fathers, but failure
is an orphan. Nowhere is this more true than in law enforcement. Recall
the image of Montgomery County, Md. police chief Charles Moose forlornly
and solitarily facing the cameras each day as the death toll mounted and
the investigation seemed at a standstill. Now compare that image with
that of the crowd surrounding him yesterday. If Moose and his colleagues
wish to see this case to a guilty verdict, they need to insulate the working
detectives from the frothing media maelstrom that will surround them right
through the trial. The detectives and prosecutors who will put this case
together should know that when the phone rings, the caller will be someone
who has something to buttress the case, not someone looking for a story
for the Washington Post.
Hard as it may be
to believe, there are prominent defense attorneys who are at this moment
salivating all over the leather upholstery in their Mercedes Benzes at
the mere thought of representing Muhammad and Malvo in what is all but
certain to be a carnival set in a courtroom. And whoever eventually does
represent the pair, they will be only too happy to exploit any defects
in the prosecution's case. Every officer and federal agent who swarmed
to the crime scenes is as much a potential defense witness as he is a
witness for the prosecution, for if a lawyer can elicit enough conflicting
testimony from individual officers, no matter how innocuous the circumstances,
it may be enough to sow seeds of doubt in the mind of a gullible juror.
As has been farcically but tragically demonstrated here in Los Angeles,
some jurors will believe just about anything.
For all the criticism
heaped upon them during the dark days, the cops pulled it off. May they
be just as successful — or just as lucky — when the case goes
to court.
—
Jack Dunphy is an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department. "Jack
Dunphy" is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are
his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management.
<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
o,
another follower of the "religion of peace" is found to be a
homicidal thug. Who would have dared imagine it? 
