In Washington DC 2002, two snipers terrorized a city and shocked the whole world. They killed 10 people in a period of 23 days.
Five years later, Lee Boyd Malvo, one of the snipers who was 17 at the time of the murders, is a different young man according to social worker Carmeta Albarus-Lindo, who has spent hundreds of hours with Malvo since his arrest.
Lee Boyd Malvo wrote in a letter to CNN that he is “still dealing with shame, guilt and remorse.”
John Allen Muhammad, the senior sniper/assassin, is on death row at Sussex One, a prison in Virginia.
“That boy was a victim before he knew it.” Muhammad’s ex-wife, Mildred says, regarding Malvo: “His life ended when he said ‘Hello’.” She claims and many people believe that young Malvo was heavily brainwashed by the older man whom she called “Dad”. Malvo met Muhammad two years before the shooting and Muhammad became something of a father to Malvo. The older man taught an impressionable Malvo that violence was the only way to correct racial problems, especially for African-Americans.
Now it appears that Malvo is entitled to a little mercy and sympathy from a society that seems preoccupied with political spiels of getting tough on crime. Too often, our justice system has been replaced by a system that appears to be self-serving for the players involved, while little time is spent finding the truth and understanding the causes of the crimes committed. Revenge without knowledge is the order of the day where judges no longer judge. They have become arbiters in a linguistic battle of technicalities. Due to minimal mandatory laws, these judges have almost no say in what happens to a person who may have been just as victimized as the original victims of the crime.
Malvo will serve many years behind bars and may never be released. But can a man change? Can a person who commits an abominable act be accepted back into society? What can we do as a society for these people we call convicts, convicts, inmates, con men and criminals? Most will go free and many will be worse off than they were when they entered prison or jail.
Society marks ex-inmates with flashy titles, such as ex-cons, when in reality these people should be called by their true titles: parents, grandparents, sons and daughters of the people who love them.
Malvo has taken some college correspondence courses and draws pictures in his 23-hour lockup cell at the Red Onion Correctional Center in Wise County, Virginia. Isn’t it the duty of society to correct these 2 million men and women who are serving time in the jails and prisons of the United States? Imprisonment, in and of itself, is punishment enough. What we should be doing is preparing people to go home and do more than commit crimes. They must be taught a trade or profession and given work upon release. Once released, they have paid the price for their crimes, and we as a society must stop judging and punishing them for what happened. Of course, some violent prisoners should never be released until they have shown, as far as possible, that they will not repeat their crimes.
Society as a whole will benefit from less crime if we have prepared these people to become productive members of society.
Malvo needed a father figure in his life. He chose the wrong one or the wrong one chose him. Let’s not abandon it again. He and everyone else in his place could use some words of encouragement.
You may contact the author for Malvo’s current contact information.
