CHESAPEAKE, Virginia (AP) — Convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad will refuse to testify at the trial of fellow suspect Lee Boyd Malvo, an attorney for Malvo said yesterday.

Attorney Craig Cooley told the judge that Muhammad’s lawyers would resist a subpoena issued to Muhammad by Malvo’s attorneys. Cooley said he accepted that Muhammad, as a result, will be unable to testify.

Muhammad, 42, a former American soldier, and Jamaican-born Malvo, 18, are charged in or accused of being linked to the killing of 10 people and the wounding of six in a three-week sniper spree in the Washington area in September-October 2002, plus shootings in Washington state, Arizona, Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana.

Malvo’s lawyers are presenting an insanity defence, claiming Muhammad brainwashed their teenage client and moulded him into a killer.

Muhammad, whose trial in Virginia Beach ended last week with a jury recommending the death sentence, still faces prosecution in several other states.

His attorneys don’t want to do anything to aid those prosecutions and hope they can get the Virginia death sentence overturned on appeal or reduced by the trial judge when Muhammad is formally sentenced in February.

Defence testimony continued yesterday at Malvo’s trial from people who knew him when he was growing up in the Caribbean.

Jerome Martin, who met Muhammad and Malvo in 2000, said Malvo had been introduced as Muhammad’s son. Muhammad instilled strict discipline in Malvo and in his biological children, Martin recalled.

“Just his presence, you would a see a different reaction on the face of the kids,” Martin said.

Malvo’s jury has been sworn to avoid any publicity in the Muhammad case. That may be difficult, however, given the intense media coverage of the cases and the two trials held in courthouses just 25 kilometres (15 miles) apart.