BR trial was put on hold due to execution

• By JOE GYAN JR.
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Oct 28, 2009 - Page: 1B

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A Louisiana prosecutor took a wait-and-see approach to convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad, still charged in a Baton Rouge killing.  Muhammad died at 9:11 p.m. EST on Nov. 10 by lethal injection in Virginia.

“Obviously, if he’s executed, that moots our case,’’ Special Assistant Attorney General John Sinquefield said.

If Muhammad’s Nov. 10 execution is carried out, the first-degree murder charge against him in East Baton Rouge Parish would be dismissed, he added in this story in The Advocate originally published on Oct. 28.

Muhammad, who grew up in Baton Rouge, and his accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, remain under indictment in the murder and robbery of Florida Boulevard beauty shop manager Hong Im Ballenger on Sept. 23, 2002.

Sinquefield said extradition papers are on file in Virginia and Maryland for both men.

Malvo pleaded guilty and is serving a life prison term in the October 2002 Virginia slaying in which Muhammad was convicted and sentenced to die, so Sinquefield said there really is no point in bringing Malvo back to Baton Rouge for a trial.

Malvo was 17 at the time of Ballenger’s killing and eligible for the death penalty, but the U.S. Supreme Court has since barred the execution of juvenile killers, he said.

Sinquefield said Ballenger’s husband and other family members are being kept in the loop on the status of the case.

“They understand exactly what’s going on,’’ he said. “He (Ballenger’s husband) was OK with me taking a wait-and-see attitude.’’

 State Police linked the bullet that killed the 45-year-old Ballenger to the weapon used in several of the Washington, D.C.-area sniper slayings, police said.

Virginia officials said Tuesday that Muhammad, the mastermind of the 2002 D.C.-area attacks, will die by lethal injection.

Muhammad declined to choose between lethal injection and electrocution, so under state law the method defaults to lethal injection, Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said.

Muhammad is scheduled to be executed Nov. 10 for the October 2002 slaying of Dean Harold Meyers at a Manassas gas station during a string of shootings.