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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.