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The story appeared Wednesday in the New York Times. The paper quoted a local official who told the paper that "it looked like Muhammad was ready to share everything, and these guys were going to get a confession." But just at that critical moment, the Times reported, Thomas DiBiagio, the United States Attorney for Maryland, intervened in the interrogation and ordered that Muhammad be taken to Baltimore to appear before a magistrate on federal charges. When local authorities protested, according to the Times, DiBiagio said, "It is out of my hands" and explained that his orders came from the White House and the Justice Department. Muhammad's expected confession was lost.
In an accompanying Times story, Montgomery County state's attorney Douglas Gansler accused the Justice Department of grandstanding by filing federal charges in the case. "This is one of the first times I've been involved in a prosecution where it makes no sense what's going on," Gansler told the paper. "This case should be initiated by Montgomery County. Our families were terrorized and paralyzed by these shootings, and they were disproportionately affected by this...The fact that we're not even at the table is very disappointing." Late Wednesday, DiBiagio strongly denied the Times account. "The allegations in the New York Times article are false," he said in a written statement. "At no time did I say that the White House had anything to do with the decision to place John Allen Muhammad in federal custody. Further, it should be clear to everyone involved in this matter that no White House officials had anything to do with any of the decisions about where these individuals would be in custody or where charges might be brought." According to DiBiagio, after being taken into custody at 3 A.M. last Thursday, Muhammad and fellow suspect John Lee Malvo were questioned by law enforcement for several hours. "There was no indication throughout the day that either of the individuals were yielding any useful information," DiBiagio says. DiBiagio says at one point in the day he reminded prosecutors that the law required that both Muhammad and Malvo appear before a magistrate sometime soon. Then DiBiagio says he got a call from the local team. "At approximately 3:00 p.m. [on Thursday], Maryland Assistant State's Attorney John McCarthy called my office and informed us that the adult [Muhammad] had invoked his right to counsel," DiBiagio says. "At that time, by law, the questioning had to cease and the suspects had to be presented to a federal magistrate judge." Justice Department officials say Muhammad had clammed up by the time he asserted his right to counsel, and that at no time had Muhammad appeared ready to give a confession. They point out that such a confession, had one been forthcoming, would have been to a death penalty-eligible crime — something they believe Muhammad was unlikely to do. In news reports today, local officials dispute some of DiBiagio's story. A follow-up story in the New York Times cites a local law enforcement official who told the paper that, in the Times's words, "Muhammad had been read his Miranda rights, signed a form that acknowledged he had been told of his right to a lawyer and that he never invoked his right to counsel." The Washington Post tells a slightly different story, citing an unnamed Montgomery County official who says Muhammad sort of asserted his right to counsel. According to the official quoted by the Post, Muhammad "said something about, 'Maybe I should talk to a lawyer.' It wasn't unequivocal. Under the law, you have to say, 'I want a lawyer.' It's not enough to say, 'Maybe I need a lawyer.'" But neither of today's stories suggests that Muhammad was on the verge of confessing, which was the key allegation in the original Times story that ignited the controversy. That report was headlined, "U.S. Sniper Case Seen as a Barrier to a Confession," and it seems unlikely that it would have been featured on the Times's front page had an unnamed local official not told the paper that "it looked like...these guys were going to get a confession." Some Justice Department officials suggest that blame for the sensational Muhammad-was-going-to-confess story lies with Douglas Gansler, the top Montgomery County prosecutor, who has long had a reputation for cultivating his public image. In January of this year, for example, the Washington Post published a profile of Gansler that began,
Later, the article reported that Gansler "can't seem to shake a nagging question: Is he a refreshing voice informing the public about Montgomery's criminal justice system or a press-hogging lawyer bucking for a political promotion?" Now Gansler is at the center of the biggest story in years. But of the accusation that local officials were close to winning a confession from Muhammad, a Justice Department official says, "This is all nonsense. The whole story begins and ends with Doug Gansler's frustrations." |
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Justice Department officials are furious with a Montgomery County, Maryland
prosecutor over a news report that claimed federal officials wrecked local
law enforcement's chance to win a confession from accused sniper John
Allen Muhammad.
