Washington sniper to be executed

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Washington sniper was to be executed Tuesday for his three-week reign of terror in 2002 that left 10 people dead and spread fear around the US capital as he picked off victims at will.

Virginia Governor Tim Kaine turned down a plea for clemency, effectively ending any hopes John Allen Muhammad, 48, had of escaping a lethal injection scheduled for 9:00 pm Tuesday (0200 GMT Wednesday).

"Having carefully reviewed the petition for clemency and judicial opinions regarding this case, I find no compelling reason to set aside the sentence that was recommended by the jury and then imposed and affirmed by the courts.

"Accordingly, I decline to intervene," Kaine said in a statement.

In his prison cell at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia, Muhammad was unmoved when he heard the US Supreme Court had turned down a last-ditch appeal for a stay of execution, his lawyer told AFP.

"The guy is delusional, he's paranoid," said lawyer Jonathan Sheldon.

"In a movie, when somebody is told that, then he reacts in a way that seems satisfying to people, especially victims, and he explodes, expresses remorse and then he goes to the last chamber with his last words.

"That's not how it (really) works. It doesn't work like that because the majority of people (on death row) in this country have some mental illness and probably quite a few, up to 40 percent, have severe mental illness."

Defense lawyers argue that Muhammad, who was expected to see family, lawyers, and a chaplain before taking the few short paces to the execution chamber, is mentally ill and was not properly represented.

Sheldon expressed his disappointment that the Supreme Court had quashed the appeal motion so quickly.

"We didn't have time to prepare sufficiently and the court, as three justices wrote, they did not have sufficient time to consider it. We consider it's just inappropriate to be rushing to execution," he told AFP.

During the 2002 shooting spree killed 10 people and left the Washington region paralyzed with fear, Muhammad, a skilled marksman, picked off victims with a high-power sniper rifle and scope.

The random killings in Maryland, Virginia and Washington spooked an area still living in dread of a repeat of the September 11 attacks and deadly anthrax mailings a year earlier.

People would squat down by their cars as they pumped gas, run from their vehicles into work, or just stay home, during the three-week rampage.

Muhammad killed each of his victims with a single bullet fired from a distance, and was apprehended after an exhaustive manhunt by federal and local police.

He was sentenced to death in 2004 following his trial for one of the fatal shootings, that of Dean Meyers, who was killed while pumping gas at a suburban Virginia filling station.

His accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, who was 17 at the time of the shootings, is serving a life sentence in prison.