Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Trial of Younger Sniper Suspect Begins 11/10/03
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec03/sniper_11-10.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What do you know about the sniper rampage that took place last year in and around Washington, DC?

2. What is capital punishment?

3. Can person who commits a murder at age 17 be sentenced to death?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. Whose trial is beginning this week? Who is the suspect accused of killing?

John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were arrested and accused of last year's sniper rampage. Malvo goes on trial as an adult this week for the death of FBI analyst Linda Franklin. Franklin was shot outside a Home Depot store in Virginia while she and her husband were loading supplies into their truck.

2. Why isn't the sniper trial taking place in or near Washington, DC?

Malvo's trial and that of fellow suspect Muhammad, which began in October, are taking place 200 miles south of Washington so that both can get a fair trial with jurors who were not affected by the atmosphere of fear created by the shootings.

3. Explain the basic defense of the suspect in the trial that starts this week.

Malvo's lawyers have filed court papers stating that the teenager was under the mental coercion of the 42-year-old former Gulf War soldier Muhammad and is not guilty by reason of insanity. With an insanity defense, the defendant admits that he committed the crime, but claims that because of his mental condition at the time, he can't be held responsible.

"His cultural background … made him very, very vulnerable to somebody who had Mr. Muhammad's indoctrinational skills," Craig Cooley, a Malvo defense attorney told the Virginian-Pilot newspaper.

4. What is the prosecution's plan for the trial?

Prosecutors will attempt to show that Malvo was a calculating killer who told two jail guards in Baltimore that the killings were motivated by money and racial hatred.

5. Explain the use of capital murder charges in this case. Who decides the suspect's punishment?

Virginia law authorizes capital punishment if there are multiple murders committed in a three-year period and if the killing is part of an act of terrorism. If the jury in Malvo's case finds him guilty of capital murder, it will hear more testimony to decide if he should be executed. If he is found guilty of anything less than capital murder, the judge in Malvo's case, Fairfax County Circuit Judge Jane Marum Roush, will decide his punishment.

 

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. In what situations should criminals who commit crimes before the age of 18 be tried as adults? Explain your reasoning.

2. Research past capital punishment cases. Have any criminals who committed crimes as youth been executed? If so, what are the circumstances surrounding their cases? What is your opinion of this practice?

3. At what point do you become responsible for your actions? Have you ever been in a situation where you feel you were, rightly or wrongly, treated differently because of your age?

Send your answers, in essay form, to extra@newshour.org for possible publication!