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Here is video of a Virginia Prison Spokesman giving a detailed preview of the upcoming execution of D.C. Sniper Mastermind John Allen Muhammad, who will be executed tonight at 9:00 PM ET. . . . (VIDEO)

JARRATT, Va. (AP) - Sniper John Allen Muhammad is meeting with relatives in the hours before his execution and one of his attorneys described the convicted killer as fearless. Attorney J. Wyndal Gordon said Muhammad had no regrets and would die with dignity Tuesday night in Virginia. Gordon also insisted that Muhammad was innocent. Gordon says Muhammad met with one of his sons before the execution and then reminisced with the attorney about the time he spent with his son before Muhammad went to prison.

D.C. sniper John Allen Muhammad is scheduled to be executed Tuesday night in Virginia. Muhammad was given the death penalty for the murder of Dean Harold Meyers, who was shot while pumping gas. In total, Muhammad and his teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, fatally shot 13 people in the Washington, D.C., area in the Fall of 2002

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday declined to block the execution of John A. Muhammad, the sniper who terrorized the Washington area seven years ago. The step cleared the way for Mr. Muhammad to be put to death on Tuesday unless Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia intervenes. The court did not comment in refusing to hear Mr. Muhammad’s appeal, but three justices objected to the relative haste accompanying the execution. Justice John Paul Stevens complained that “under our normal practice,” Mr. Muhammad’s petition for the court to take his case would have been discussed at the justices’ conference scheduled...

Seven years after he and his teenage sidekick terrorised the Washington area with a three-week killing spree using a high-powered rifle, John Allen Muhammad — the “Beltway sniper” — is due to be executed tonight by lethal injection. The execution is reviving memories for the millions of people in Washington, Virginia and Maryland who spent October 2002 crouched in their cars as they pumped petrol, ducking and weaving across open spaces and running into schools with their children, glancing anxiously at nearby woods. Muhammad, a former soldier and 41 at the time, and Lee Boyd Malvo, then 17, triggered the...

The Supreme Court Monday denied John Allen Muhammad's request to stay his execution, clearing the way for Virginia to put to death the man who terrorized the Washington region as the Beltway Sniper. Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor objected to the court's haste, saying it "highlights once again the perversity of executing inmates before their appeals process have been fully concluded." Stevens, writing for the three, said Virginia had short-circuited the process by scheduling Muhammad's execution for Tuesday night, earlier than the court would normally have reviewed his petition for the court to take his...

Convicted Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad is filing last-minute appeals, trying to avoid a Tuesday appointment in Virginia's death chamber. The legal scramble is reviving memories for countless in the D.C. region who lived through the three weeks in October 2002 when Muhammad and his ward, Lee Boyd Malvo, went on a rampage that terrorized the capital region. Picking out strangers at random, they opened fire from a hole cut in an old car, leaving notes behind to taunt police and to celebrate the carnage they inflicted. By the time the pair was finished, 10 were dead, three were wounded...

RICHMOND, Va. — Attorneys for John Allen Muhammad released a May 2008 letter on Wednesday in which the mastermind of the deadly 2002 sniper attacks in the Washington, D.C., area proclaims his innocence. The rambling, handwritten letter was made available because of requests for a statement from Muhammad, his attorneys wrote on the Web page of their law firm. The letter was filed in federal court in connection with Muhammad's unsuccessful attempt to block his execution, the attorneys said.

In court papers filed Tuesday, Muhammad's attorneys say the execution should be put off while the court considers whether his trial lawyer was ineffective.

The mastermind of the sniper attacks that terrorized Washington-area residents in October 2002 will die by lethal injection next month, a Virginia corrections official said Tuesday. The state will give convicted killer John Allen Muhammad a lethal injection because he declined to choose between that and electrocution. "So under the Code of Virginia it defaults to lethal injection," said state Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor. A prisoner has until 15 days before the execution to decide on which method, according to Virginia law.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - The mastermind of the 2002 Washington, DC-area sniper attacks will die by lethal injection next month, Virginia officials said Tuesday. John Allen Muhammad declined to choose between lethal injection and electrocution, so under state law the method defaults to lethal injection, Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said. Muhammad is scheduled to be executed Nov. 10 for the October 2002 slaying of Dean Harold Meyers at a Manassas gas station during a string of shootings. The three-week killing spree in October 2002 left 10 dead in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad will die by lethal injection when he is executed next month, Virginia officials said Tuesday. Muhammad declined to choose between lethal injection and electrocution, so under state law the method defaults to lethal injection, Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said. Muhammad is scheduled to be executed Nov. 10 for the October 2002 slaying of Dean Harold Meyers at a Manassas gas station during a string of shootings.

Chicago prosecutors have subpoenaed the grades and other material regarding the classroom performance of Northwestern University journalism students, according to The New York Times. Seems the prosecutors are tired of being second-guessed by the J-students, who are participants in The Innocence Project. The Innocence Project is an effort by Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism to provide students with real-life experience in scrutinizing the actions of police and prosecutors in old cases. Their work has led to the release of at least 11 inmates who were shown to have been wrongly convicted. It's that success rate that has the local DAs...

A former Cottonwood man who served 10 years on Texas death row until his murder conviction was overturned last year by an appellate court was killed Saturday in a solo truck crash in eastern Texas. Michael Toney, a 43-year-old Redding native, was killed when his pickup, which had oversized tires, rolled while going around a curve on Farm Road 347 in the rain Saturday morning, a spokeswoman with the Texas Department of Public Safety in Jacksonville said Monday. He was thrown from the pickup and died at the scene, she said. Toney, who had long maintained his innocence, was released...

A federal appeals court Monday halted the execution of an inmate three weeks after problems with a lethal-injection attempt. A panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled 2-1 to grant the request of 43-year-old Lawrence Reynolds Jr., who had been sentenced to die for strangling his 67-year-old neighbor during a 1994 robbery. On Sept. 15, Gov. Ted Strickland stopped the lethal injection of Romell Broom after state executioners struggled for two hours to find a usable vein. Mr. Broom's execution is on hold while his attorneys prepare for a Nov. 30 federal-court hearing. They argue...

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said Monday he can't think of any reason he would stop the execution of Washington, D.C.-area sniper John Allen Muhammad. Muhammad is scheduled to be executed Nov. 10 for the October 2002 killing spree that left 10 dead in the nation's capital, Virginia and Maryland. "I know of nothing in this case now that would suggest that there is any credible claim of innocence or that there was anything procedurally wrong with the prosecution," Kaine said on his monthly call-in radio show on WTOP. Kaine said he would review Muhammad's petition for clemency when he...

Can a vein save a convicted killer? It the case of Romell Broom—it might. Broom was sentenced to death for raping and murdering 14-year-old Tryna Middleton on Sept. 21, 1984. Broom isn't supposed to be alive to witness the 25th anniversary of Middleton's death—but he is. Last Tuesday, the execution team at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility spent several hours trying unsuccessfully to find a viable vein for a lethal injection. Now, Ohio is faced with the difficult task of determining whether it can try to execute Broom a second time, after it botched the first attempt.

It must have been a grim scene on Tuesday night inside of Ohio’s state prison at Lucasville. Romell Broom lay strapped to a gurney with a team of medical technicians and correction officials hovering about him. But rather than receiving emergency medical treatment, Romell was waiting to die. Back in 1984, Broom had been convicted of abducting a fourteen-year-old child as she walked home from a football game in Cleveland, raping her and killing her. No credible opposition to the evidence presented against him was forthcoming, and the court determined that Romell should no longer be sharing above ground real...

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - A judge in Virginia on Wednesday set the date of execution of Washington sniper John Allen Muhammad to Nov. 10. The decision of Prince William County Circuit Court Judge Mary Grace O'Brien will send Muhammad to the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt for lethal injection. Muhammad's lawyer said he plans to appeal the ruling before the U.S. Supreme Court or seek clemency from Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D).Muhammad was sentenced to death in 2003 for the killing of Dean H. Meyers in 2002. He and accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo sniped 13 victims in the Maryland, the...

Beltway Sniper Shootings FR THREAD ARCHIVES This thread is for everyone, be sure to bookmark it. If you create a new thread, feel free to post a link to it here as well. It will be updated as often as possible. Maryland Area Prayer Thread: Pray for Metro area Freepers and Families If anyone has time today and is so inclined, you can listen to the Prince George County or Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Dispatches on the internet at http://www.sconfire.com/livedispatch.htm. The links are on the right side about halfway down. I will try to be tuning in through out...

Court sets execution date for Washington, DC sniper mastermind A Virginia judge has ruled that the mastermind behind the 2002 sniper attacks in Washington, DC that left 10 people dead will be executed on November 10. John Allen Muhammad is expected to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and ask Governor Timothy M. Kaine for clemency. Muhammad was sentenced to death for the slaying of Dean Meyers, one of 10 people shot to death during a 2002 rampage that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area. uhammad and teenage accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo killed six people in Alabama and Louisiana before moving...

A Virginia judge has set a Nov. 10 execution date for John Allen Muhammad, mastermind of the 2002 sniper attacks in the Washington, D.C., area. The attorney general's office had requested a Nov. 9 execution. But Muhammad's attorney Jonathan Sheldon says Prince William County Circuit Judge Mary Grace O'Brien delayed it one day. That's because Nov. 9 is a Monday and they want government offices to be open the day before in case of last-minute court action....

LUCASVILLE, Ohio, Sept. 15 (UPI) -- An Ohio man sentenced for a 1984 killing got another week of life Tuesday after the execution team failed to find a vein to inject lethal drugs. Executions spent almost two hours trying to find a vein to inject the drugs into Romell Broom, said Tim Sweeney, one of his lawyers, CNN reported.

Minutes after he learned a jury had sentenced him to death, killer James Broadnax laughed at the mother of one of his murder victims as she told him how he had devastated her life................ Patterson said television interviews Broadnax gave after the crime, in which he boasted about killing the two men and expressed no remorse or sympathy for their families, influenced jurors more than the defendant’s impassive demeanor in the courtroom.

SAN QUENTIN STATE PRISON, Calif. (AP) -- An inmate who was sentenced to death in 1980 for the kidnapping and killing of two Southern California girls has died of natural causes. Officials at San Quentin State Prison say 55-year-old Michael Dee Mattison died in an outside hospital facility early Friday morning.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday stopped the execution of a Virginia man while it considers whether to hear his argument that he was unconstitutionally tried twice for killing a 16-year-old girl after describing the crime in a taunting letter to a prosecutor.

Richmond, VA) -- The DC Sniper will be back in court again tomorrow. John Allen Muhammad is going to a federal appeals court in the hopes of overturning his 2003 conviction, and the death sentence that came with it. Muhammad's new lawyers say the court-appointed attorneys who took over the case after Muhammad tried to represent himself were ineffective, that prosecutors held back evidence, and that the trial judge erred by deciding not allow testimony about Muhammad's traumatic childhood. The case will be heard in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond. The three-week shooting spree in 2002 left...

COLUMBIA, S.C. — An Alabama man convicted of killing a police officer has been executed in South Carolina, after cutting himself with a razor Friday. Thomas Treshawn Ivey was put to death by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. Friday in the state's death chamber in Columbia. The 34-year-old made no final statement. Prison officials said Ivey removed a blade from a disposable razor earlier and suffered non-life-threatening wounds when he cut himself on the neck. They strapped him to a chair, until he was strapped down for the lethal injection.

(05-08) 15:31 PDT Columbia, S.C. (AP) -- An Alabama man convicted of killing a police officer has been executed in South Carolina.Thomas Treshawn Ivey was put to death by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. Friday in the state's death chamber in Columbia. The 34-year-old made no final statement. Ivey had been awaiting execution since 1995, when he was convicted of killing Tommy Harrison. Prosecutors said Ivey shot the 38-year-old Orangeburg police sergeant in 1993 after trying to pass a bad check.

SACRAMENTO - Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco called for overhauling the state's death-penalty system during a Capitol rally Wednesday for crime victims. Pacheco, the keynote speaker at the 20th annual Victims March on the Capitol, criticized the years-long delays between when a criminal is sentenced to death and when the execution takes place. Pacheco singled out the 1992 death sentence for Andrew Lamont Brown, of Riverside, for killing 17-year-old Christina Ann Ramirez, of Riverside, during a carjacking. Brown remains on death row. "How has this animal not received justice?" Pacheco said, choking up. "He has been sitting on death...

JACKSON, Ga. (AP) - A Georgia man convicted of murdering 1 of the followers of his white supremacist group insisted that he was not to blame for the killing shortly before he was put to death Wednesday evening.

Sitting in a 4-by-9-foot cell on San Quentin's Death Row, Scott Peterson doesn't have a lot of choices in life, but he can decide how to decorate his wall. While many cons plaster their cells with pictorial collages, Peterson has only one photo hanging across from his bunk: a smiling shot of he and his wife, Laci.

A Georgia man expressed remorse for killing his "good friend" shortly before he was executed Tuesday for the murder of a neighbor he stabbed to death after the 27-year-old woman spurned his sexual advances. Robert Newland, 65, was put to death by lethal injection at the state prison at Jackson and was pronounced dead at 7:35 p.m. Newland was the first person executed in Georgia this year. "I'm sorry this happened. I wish I could go back to that day," he said. "I have no grudges against anybody. I still don't remember what happened, but what happened happened." A few...

On October 11, 1997, after a night filled with marijuana, cocaine, and drinking, Luis Salazar claims he thought he was back home in his own house, and that the person he stabbed to death was an intruder. Instead, Salazar was in the home of Martha Sanchez, 28, and her three children, one of whom Salazar also stabbed in the chest after killing their mother. Evidence shows that Salazar knew what he was doing: Evidence, however, showed the telephone wires at the home next door to where Salazar previously lived had been cut and Sanchez’s injuries indicated Salazar had tried to...

JACKSON, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia man was executed Tuesday for stabbing a neighbor to death who had spurned his sexual advances. Robert Newland, 65, was put to death by lethal injection at the state prison at Jackson and was pronounced dead at 7:35 p.m. by authorities. He was the first person executed in Georgia this year. Newland was convicted in 1987 and sentenced to death for the slaying of Carol Sanders Beatty, a 27-year-old former state and national amateur diving champion. Authorities say Newland went to the woman's duplex on St. Simons Island in May 1986 after a drinking...

In 2008, the state executed only two convicted killers from Tarrant County. But if the execution of James Edward Martinez is carried out Tuesday night as planned, he would be the fourth inmate from Tarrant County to receive lethal injection this year. A fifth is scheduled in June. Tarrant County prosecutors say the spate of executions this year is fitting because the punishment provides the final justice that residents there demand. "I think the public understands the magnitude of what can happen," said prosecutor Tiffany Burks, who sent Erick Davila to death row last month. "I think that the law...

It's been three years since the night a federal judge blocked an execution at San Quentin State Prison because of concerns that the state's haphazard lethal injection methods could inflict prolonged and excruciating pain on a condemned inmate, violating the U.S. Constitution. Today, the state is no closer to executing the Stockton murderer-rapist who was to have died that night, Michael Morales, or any of the other 679 prisoners on the nation's largest death row. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration says it's trying to break the logjam by agreeing to let the public comment on proposed new procedures for executing convicts,...

A California inmate condemned to die more than 22 years ago for murder and attempted murder has died of natural causes. The state department of corrections said Tuesday 65-year-old Thomas Francis Edwards died Saturday at a medical facility. He came to San Quentin State Prison in 1986 for the 1981 murder of a 12-year-old girl and...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A man blamed for numerous killings and rapes has been executed in Texas for the murder of a woman who was raped, beaten and left to die on a Houston street. Fifty-one-year-old Johnny Ray Johnson was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m. Thursday. A Harris County jury sent Johnson to death row for the 1995 murder of 41-year-old Leah Joette Smith. According to court documents, her murder was one of at least five rape-slayings in Houston and Austin that were linked to the former truck and taxi driver. He also was linked at least eight other rapes...

HOUSTON—A Texas death row inmate with a history of mental problems pulled out his only good eye and told authorities he ate it. Andre Thomas, 25, was arrested for the fatal stabbings of his estranged wife, their young son and her 13-month-old daughter in March 2004. Their hearts also had been ripped out. He was convicted and condemned for the infant's death.

WALLA WALLA -- A sturdy metal gurney, topped by a thin foam mattress and backboard, dominates the small chamber that awaits Darold Ray Stenson for his Dec. 3 execution at the Washington state Penitentiary. Stenson, 55, was convicted of aggravated murder for the 1993 shooting deaths of his wife and a business partner while his three young children slept nearby in his Clallam County farmhouse. Eight men sit on Washington's death row, but Stenson would be the first inmate put to death since 2001 if none of his pending appeals is granted. A federal appeals court lifted a stay last...

FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — A former Army cook convicted of multiple rapes and murders is set to die next month in what would be the U.S. military's first execution in nearly 50 years. The military said Thursday that former North Carolina soldier Ronald A. Gray is to be executed Dec. 10 at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Ind. Gray was arrested in connection with four slayings and eight rapes in the Fayetteville, N.C., area between April 1986 and January 1987, while he was stationed at Fort Bragg. He was convicted of murdering two women.

Reporting from Oceanside -- Vanessa Iberri and Kelly Cartier noticed the balding man in the red Datsun pickup as he drove past them into the Blue Jay Campground of Cleveland National Forest. The 12-year-old girls were leaving the campground ahead of Vanessa's mother, heading for a creek-side picnic spot where they all planned to eat lunch. The truck turned around, passed the girls again and disappeared around a bend of the dirt road. The driver, Thomas Francis Edwards, an expert marksman who worked at a shooting range, pulled over and waited. "Hey, girls!" Edwards yelled from the cab when the...

After a Georgia inmate convicted of murdering a police officer was spared from execution a second time, the condemned man's widely publicized supporters erupted in joy. But far from television cameras, the victim's family seethed. "My son is dead. Theirs is still alive," said Anneliese MacPhail, the officer's mother. "That's just the way I feel."

Excerpt - The U.S. Supreme Court today issued a stay of execution for Troy Anthony Davis less than two hours before he was to be put to death by lethal injection. ~ snip ~

ACKSON — Georgia’s longest-serving death row inmate was executed Tuesday in the slaying of his wife 34 years ago. Jack Alderman was pronounced dead at 7:25 p.m. at the state prison in Jackson. The 57-year-old Alderman was sentenced to die by lethal injection in the 1974 slaying of his wife, Barbara. He and an accomplice beat her with a crescent wrench and choked her at their Chatham County home before dumping her body in a creek. Prosecutors allege he wanted to collect $20,000 in life insurance money. Alderman has been on death row for 33 years.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A death row inmate who says he's too fat to be executed received poor legal help during his trial and later when he appealed the death sentence, his lawyers said Monday during a clemency hearing.

... Superior Court Judge William R. Froeberg then told Tran, 33, and co-defendant Noel Jesse Plata, also 33, that they should suffer the death penalty for the Nov. 9, 1995 torture slaying. Plata kept his eyes cast down during the 30-minute sentencing hearing and did not comment. Froeberg handed down those maximum sentences after he listened to prosecutor Ebrahim Baytieh read a poignant three-page letter from Dongsil Park, Linda's mother, who wrote that the emotional toll of losing her daughter in such a heinous fashion made it unbearable for her to be present. ... Linda Park was 18 when the...

Condemned inmate Michael Rodriguez, convicted of taking part in killing a Dallas-area police officer nearly eight years ago while a member of the infamous "Texas 7" gang of escaped fugitives, was executed Thursday. He was the eighth convicted killer executed this year in the nation's busiest capital punishment state and the fourth this month. Another is set for next week.

(Dallas, TX) -- A Dallas killer, one of the most dangerous men on Death Row, will be executed tonight. Leon Dorsey freely admits that he murdered two Blockbuster employees in Dallas during a high-profile 1994 robbery. He shows no remorse over the brutal killings and refuses to apologize. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice keeps Dorsey on its highest lockdown level because of a history of violence and threats. In his eight years on Death Row, Dorsey has amassed nearly 100 infractions including an attack where he stabbed a guard 14 times with a hand-made shank. The guard was saved...