CHESAPEAKE, Virginia (AP) — The jury that will decide whether Jamaican-born teen, Lee Boyd Malvo, is guilty of participating in last year’s killing spree was yesterday painted a picture of an impatient mother, Una James, who often beat her son for trivial reasons.

Semone Powell, a second cousin, testified that James beat Malvo even though he was an obedient child. She would get upset if she asked Malvo to bring her a basket and she thought the boy moved too slowly, Powell said.

“She would hit him, hit him randomly all over his body with her hand,” Powell testified, adding that James also threw shoes at Malvo, pulled his hair and yelled at him.

And in her testimony, the principal of an Antiguan school that Malvo attended testified that James approved the designation of John Allen Muhammad as the young boy’s guardian.

Muhammad once identified himself as Malvo’s uncle, Rosalind Aaron testified one day after a jury in a separate trial recommended that the 42 year-old man be executed for last year’s sniper killings.

Prosecutors said Muhammad and Malvo, now 18, formed a mobile sniper team. In all, they were charged with, or linked to, the killing of 10 people and the wounding of six in the Washington area between September and October of 2002. They have also been charged with shootings in Washington State, Arizona, Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana. Their two trials were held separately.

Aaron, the principal of a Seventh-day Adventist school on the Caribbean island of Antigua, described Malvo as “intelligent, respectful and jovial”.

Malvo is on trial for the October 14, 2002, shooting of Linda Franklin at a store in Falls Church. He faces the same two murder counts that Muhammad did: multiple murders within three months and murder as part of a terrorist plot.

Malvo’s defence attorneys admit he shot Franklin, but said that Muhammad molded the teen into a killer. They also argued that his unstable childhood, as well as a Jamaican culture that emphasised discipline and obedience, made Malvo especially susceptible to Muhammad’s influence.

On Tuesday, defence attorney Craig Cooley introduced a photo of the Antiguan school where Aaron taught Malvo, calling it a stark contrast with the state-of-the art high school where Muhammad enrolled Malvo in Washington State.

Aaron said Malvo left the school roughly two weeks after she took a Quran away from him, then gave it back at the end of the day. She said she didn’t want him spreading Muslim ideas in a Christian school.

The first person to take the stand in Malvo’s defence Monday was his father, Leslie Malvo, a mason who lives in Kingston, Jamaica.

Leslie Malvo said he had a “very nice relationship, a loving one” with Lee, whom he described as “handsome, willing, obedient, manageable” as well as “beautiful”.