Virginia

Deliberations begin in second sniper trial

A jury in the murder trial of Lee Boyd Malvo got the case Tuesday after his lawyer argued the teenager was completely under the spell of mastermind John Allen Muhammad when he took part in the Washington sniper shootings.

Defense lawyer Michael Arif said Malvo, desperate for a father figure, found the wrong man to emulate in Muhammad and eventually became “a cult of one” with Muhammad as his leader.

“Lee could no more separate himself from John Muhammad than you could separate from your shadow on a sunny day,” Arif told the jury.

But prosecutor Robert Horan Jr. said Malvo was as responsible as Muhammad, calling the pair “peas in a pod.”

“Their belief, as wild and vicious as it was, was that if they killed enough people, the government would come around” and meet their demand for $10 million, Horan said.

San Francisco

Appeals court OKs medical marijuana

An appeals court ruled Tuesday that a federal law outlawing marijuana did not apply to sick people who were allowed to smoke pot with a doctor’s recommendation.

The ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was a blow to the federal government in its fight against medical marijuana. The Justice Department has argued that state medical marijuana laws were trumped by federal drug laws.

In its 2-1 decision, the court said prosecuting medical marijuana users under the federal law was unconstitutional if the marijuana was not sold, transported across state lines or used for nonmedicinal purposes.

West Virginia

Guilty plea entered in Target store assault

A man accused of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl in a West Virginia Target store pleaded guilty Tuesday to federal charges in two states.

Allen Dwayne Coates, 38, of Irvington, Ky., faces up to life in prison for crossing state lines with the intent to engage in a sexual act with a person under 12.

A surveillance camera showed Coates stalking the girl and leading her down an aisle by her wrist before the alleged July assault. Federal prosecutors said Coates told the girl he was a security guard and that he suspected her of shoplifting.

He allegedly gave a similar story to a 9-year-old girl at a Wal-Mart in Ashland, Ky., a day earlier. That girl fled and was unharmed.

Coates also pleaded guilty Tuesday to possession of child pornography, a charge filed in Kentucky. That case was consolidated with the one in West Virginia.

Dallas

Study: Pollution raises chance of heart disease

Air pollution in U.S. cities causes twice as many deaths from heart disease as it does from lung cancer and other respiratory ailments, a surprising new study suggests.

The statistical analysis was published Tuesday in Circulation, a journal of the American Heart Assn.

“It certainly did surprise us when we first observed these results,” said lead author C. Arden Pope III, an epidemiologist at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. “We just sort of anticipated that breathing particles into your lungs would most likely have a direct impact on your lungs.”

Still, Pope stressed that the lungs were intricately involved. For example, lung inflammation from breathing polluted air can lead to heart disease.

New York

Mother convicted of killing three babies

A woman was convicted Tuesday in Monticello of killing three of her infant children during the 1980s, a case brought after mummified remains were found in a storage shed in Arizona this year.

After about four hours of deliberations, a jury found Diane Odell, 50, guilty of second-degree murder, ruling that she acted with a depraved indifference to human life.

The babies died shortly after they were born between 1982 and 1985 in Kauneonga Lake, about 80 miles north of New York City. Odell was arrested in May after the remains, wrapped in towels and blankets, were found in cardboard boxes in a storage shed in Safford, Ariz.

Odell also had another baby whose remains were found in 1989 in a car at a junkyard in Sullivan County. Prosecutors did not have enough evidence to pursue that case.

Odell has eight surviving children.

New York City

Ferry crash toll rises to 11

Debra Castro, the most seriously injured survivor of the Staten Island ferry accident died Tuesday, raising the tragedy’s death toll to 11.

Castro, 39, died at Staten Island University Hospital from multisystem organ failure, according to hospital officials.

After the ferry slammed into a concrete pier on Oct. 15, Castro lost her left leg, and half of her right leg was amputated to the knee. She also suffered a broken arm, and part of her left ear was shorn off.

Her husband, Bill Castro, had filed a suit against the city for $220 million before her death.