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Niall Haughey‘s father says, ―I am not worried about him at all.‖ (Sunday Irish Independent,
Internet, 6/29/03)
Malvo/Brainwashing
“Brainwashing” Defense Mounted
Lee Boyd Malvo, whose attorneys mounted an insanity-by-reason-of-brainwashing
defense, has been found guilty of two counts of capital murder and sentenced to life in
prison without parole in connection with the Washington, DC-area sniper attacks in 2002.
The trial lasted 18 days and the jury heard almost 150 witnesses.
The defense argued that the teenager had been indoctrinated while under the tight control
of John Allen Muhammad, recently convicted of another of the sniper murders. Prosecutors
in Allen‘s trial, faced with the fact that most of the evidence pointed to Malvo as the actual
shooter, had argued that Muhammad deserved to be convicted because he controlled Malvo
and molded the younger man into a killer. Police interrogation tapes — which the defense
tried unsuccessfully to keep out of evidence — indicated Malvo was proud of his shooting
skill, and unremorseful.
The law in Virginia, where both were tried, requires the defense to prove the indoctrination
led to a ―mental disease or defect‖ that left the defendant unable to distinguish right from
wrong or control his actions. The prosecution said Malvo‘s evasion of arrest for weeks during
the killing spree, and his conspiring with Muhammad to extort $10 million from the
government while on the run, proved that he knew he was doing wrong. Patty Hearst‘s
similar ―brainwashing‖ defense failed in 1976, and experts say that it hardly ever prevails,
especially in ‗high profile‘ cases.
Malvo’s Background
The defense tried to show that Malvo‘s background predisposed him to be controlled and
manipulated by Muhammad. Relatives from Jamaica, where Malvo grew up, testified his
mother moved frequently, often leaving him with family or friends, and beat him often, once
after he threatened to hang himself if she moved him again. One of Malvo‘s high school
teachers said family instability led Malvo to search constantly for a father figure and he
happened to find one in Muhammad.
The Rev. Albert Archer, who runs a homeless shelter in Bellingham, WA, testified
Muhammad and Malvo had a father-son relationship Muhammad had ‖a very strong
influence‖ over Malvo ―a personality that will draw people to him ...It was a winning way
he had of drawing Lee into his way of thinking.‖
Muhammad met Malvo when the older man — a former U.S. Army regular who served in
Operation Desert Storm but left the service discontented — visited Antigua, where he
allegedly began to indoctrinate Malvo and train him in marksmanship, which continued after
they traveled to Washington state in late 2002. Malvo wrote a letter at that time to a niece
of Muhammad‘s first wife saying: ―Why am I here, there seems for me no purpose?
Everyone who has met me hates my gutsy rambling and considers my gibberish [sic] fake.
My patience is thinning, my conflict unresolved, my psyche and fear strewn ...I should
have been banished and killed ...for I‘m perceived as a walking time bomb waiting to
explode ...All I ask is to be loved.‖ The defense treated the letter as a cry for help, but in
response to a prosecution objection the judge withheld it from the jury.
Psychological Evaluations
In custody, Malvo described to a forensic social worker the new society of ―superpeople‖ he
believed would change the world he and Mohammad intended to create. They would begin
with 70 boys and girls from around the world brought to live in a community somewhere in

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Canada financed by money demanded in notes left at the scenes of the shootings. Many of
Malvo‘s drawings from jail have anti-American themes and commentary. They included
sketches of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and one of sniper crosshairs imposed on
a sketch of the White House.
University of Virginia psychologist Dewey Cornell, who interviewed Malvo extensively,
testified Muhammad taught the younger man to hate whites. One method Muhammad
allegedly used to indoctrinate Malvo was to put the younger man to sleep listening to a
reggae tape that also contained a track with an anti-white speech by Malcolm X. Cornell
reports Muhammad took Malvo on cross-country trips to speak with blacks in slums and
homeless shelters. Malvo told Cornell he watched the film ―The Matrix‖ more than 100 times
and identified with the hero, who wants to free human beings so oppressed they are
unaware they are being dominated. Muhammad also reportedly put Malvo on a strict
vegetarian diet, with vitamin pills, and once tied him to a tree so Malvo could prove his
toughness.
Prosecutor Robert Horan argued throughout that the defense confused ―indoctrination‖ with
―insanity,‖ while the defense attempted to show that the indoctrination was so severe that
Malvo could not distinguish right from wrong, the major criterion for insanity.
Maine-based forensic psychiatrist Diane H. Schekty testified Malvo was mentally ill at the
time of the shootings and unable to tell right from wrong. She said Malvo had a pathological
loyalty to Muhammad and was ―like a puppet in his hands.‖ He suffers, she added, from
―dissociate disorder [sic].‖ Referring to Malvo sitting at the witness table, she said: ―This
does not look like somebody who is facing horrendous charges. He is sitting there doodling
like a child in preschool.‖ Sheckty said Malvo told her Muhammad dissuaded him from
believing that killing was absolutely wrong, taught him to suppress his conscience if he had
doubts, and that ―right and wrong‖ were artificial constructs without real meaning.
Clinical psychologist David Schretlen, from Johns Hopkins University, said that Malvo‘s low
score on certain tests given while he was in custody could stem from depression, anxiety, or
a ―dissociative disorder‖ in which one loses touch with reality. Cornell also concluded that
Malvo suffered from a dissociative disorder at the time of the attacks. Cornell believes Malvo
took responsibility for the actual shooting because he blamed himself ―for the failure of the
mission.‖ He says Malvo told him that whenever he, Malvo, had misgivings about what they
were doing, Muhammad was either there to allay his concerns or he would imagine
Muhammad‘s voice with the same message. Cornell thinks the sniper killing for which Malvo
was tried served as Malvo‘s first test in doing Muhammad‘s bidding. Malvo only began
breaking away from Muhammad‘s influence seven months after their arrest, according to
Cornell, who added that Malvo began to realize that the vision of creating utopia with money
extorted from the government did not make sense. Malvo finally asked himself, Cornell
reports: ―If Allah was [really] behind this, how could we [have] fail[ed]?‖
Two other mental health professionals testified Malvo was not mentally ill and knew right
from wrong at the time of the murders. ―This is a person who is fully conscious, cognizant,
deliberating, purposeful,‖ said psychologist Stanton E. Samenow for the prosecution. ―Mr.
Malvo knew exactly what he was doing.‖ Samenov noted that Malvo wrote, in a letter to a
fellow inmate after his arrest: ―I play the stupid fool. Everybody underestimates me.‖
Samenow said Malvo told him: ―I‘m willing to question. I don‘t take anything at face value.
I‘m not impressionable. I‘m not weak minded.‖ Prosecution psychologist Evan S. Nelson said
the relationship between Malvo and Muhammad was based on idol worship not
brainwashing, and was consensual. Nelson implied the defense reeducated Malvo just as, it
had earlier argued, Muhammad brainwashed Malvo.
Psychologist and cult expert Paul Martin [who heads an Ohio rehabilitation facility for former
cult members] noted the cases of Korean War prisoner brainwashing, the Branch Davidian