Having lived in the Northern Virginia/DC area and only a few miles from where one of the victims was shot and killed, I remember the terror people, including myself, felt during that time.....afraid to pump their gas, or walk in public view, or how the stations hung up sheets around the gas pumps for the protection of their customers. This man, along with Malvo, were terrorists who not only terrorized their victims and the victim's families, but terrorized a whole metropolitan, changing the way people lived their daily lives during their reign. As far as I am concerned, death is appropriate here.
DC sniper's Muhammad's execution set for tonight
By DENA POTTER, Associated Press Writer Dena Potter, Associated Press Writer
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57 mins ago
RICHMOND, Va. – Virginia's governor refused to spare the life of
John Allen Muhammad
and cleared the way for his execution Tuesday night for the sniper
attacks in 2002 that left 10 dead and spread such fear people were
afraid to go shopping, cut grass or pump gas.
The three-week
killing spree
in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., was carried out with a
teenage accomplice who is serving life in prison without parole.
Muhammad, 48, was to die by injection at 9 p.m. after he exhausted his
court appeals and
Gov. Tim Kaine denied clemency.
Muhammad's attorneys had asked Kaine to commute his sentence to life in prison because they said he was severely mentally ill.
"I
think crimes that are this horrible, you just can't understand them,
you can't explain them," said Kaine, a Democrat known for carefully
considering
death penalty cases. "They completely dwarf your ability to look into the life of a person who would do something like this and understand why."
Muhammad was sentenced to death for killing Dean Harold Meyers at a gas station in northern Virginia. He and his accomplice,
Lee Boyd Malvo, also were suspected of fatal shootings in Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana and Washington state.
Prosecutors
chose to put Muhammad and Malvo on trial in Virginia first because of
the state's willingness to execute killers. He and Malvo were also
convicted of six other murders in Maryland and both were sentenced to
six life terms.
The death penalty was later
ruled out for Malvo because the U.S. Supreme Court barred the execution
of juveniles, who was 17 during the killing spree.
The
motive for the shootings in the nation's capital region remains murky.
Malvo said Muhammad wanted to use the plot to extort $10 million from
the government to set up a camp in Canada where homeless children would
be trained as terrorists. But Muhammad's ex-wife has said she believes
the attacks were a smoke screen for his plan to kill her and regain
custody of their three children.
Muhammad has
never testified or explained why he directed the attacks that
terrorized the Washington region, with victims gunned down while doing
everyday chores. People stayed indoors, and those who had to go outside
weaved as they walked or bobbed their heads to make themselves less of
a target.
The terror ended Oct. 24, 2002, when
police captured Muhammad and Malvo as they slept at a Maryland rest
stop in a car they had outfitted so a shooter could hide in the trunk
and fire through a hole in the body of the vehicle.
Muhammad had been in and out of the military since he graduated from high school in Louisiana and entered the
National Guard. A convert to Islam,
John Allen Williams would later change his name to Muhammad.
He
joined the Army in 1985 and trained in Washington state as a combat
engineer. He did not take special sniper training but earned an expert
rating in the M-16 rifle — the military cousin of the .223-caliber
Bushmaster rifle used in the sniper shootings.
However,
his life was full of failure. He was twice divorced, and after serving
in the first Iraq war, he could never find financial stability.
He
opened a karate school but it didn't last; neither did his car repair
shop. The man who looked for self-discipline in exercise and Islam
found himself living in a homeless shelter in 2001 and a few months
later was accused of shoplifting food.
On Tuesday, Muhammad met with immediate family members but did not have a spiritual adviser,
Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said.
The families of those killed were ready for execution day.
Cheryll
Witz was one of several victims' relatives who planned to watch the
execution. Malvo confessed that, at Muhammad's direction, he shot her
father, Jerry Taylor, on a Tucson, Ariz., golf course in March 2002.
"He basically watched my dad breathe his last breath," Witz said. "Why shouldn't I watch his last breath?"
Death penalty opponents planned vigils across the state, and some were headed for Jarratt, about an hour south of Richmond, for the execution at
Greensville Correctional Center.
Beth Panilaitis, executive director of Virginians for
Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said those who planned to protest understand the fear that gripped the community, and the nation, during the attacks.
"The greater metro area and the citizens of Virginia have been safe
from this crime for seven years," Panilaitis said. "Incarceration has
worked and life without the possibility of parole has and will continue
to keep the people of Virginia safe."
Kaine, Virginia's first Roman Catholic governor, has openly expressed his faith-based opposition to
capital punishment, but promised as a candidate in 2005 that he would carry out Virginia's death penalty law despite his beliefs.
In September, Kaine delayed the October execution of a former
Army intelligence worker from Maryland convicted of killing a northern
Virginia couple, saying he needed more time to consider the case. That
execution is scheduled for next week.
