Supreme Court Refuses to Stop D.C. Sniper Mastermind's Execution
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to block Tuesday's scheduled execution of sniper mastermind John Allen Muhammad.
The Court did not comment Monday on why it refused to consider his appeal.
Muhammad is scheduled to die by injection at a Virginia prison for the slaying of Dean Harold Meyers at a gas station during a three-week spree in October 2002 across Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
Muhammad and his teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, were also suspected of fatal shootings in other states, including Louisiana, Alabama and Arizona. Malvo is serving a life sentence in prison.
Muhammad still has a clemency petition before Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine.
Meanwhile, the execution has brought back painful memories for D.C.-area residents.
When James D. Martin was shot dead seven years ago in the parking lot of a grocery store in suburban Washington, it got little attention on the nightly news.
Early the next morning, a landscaper was fatally shot in nearby Rockville, also by a .223-caliber bullet. Then a cabbie, at a gas station not far away. There was another shooting a half-hour later just up the road — a woman slain as she sat reading on a sidewalk bench. Within 90 minutes, another woman was gunned down while vacuuming her van at a service station
By 10 a.m., it was clear that something sinister was happening. Something awful.
Then it spread.
A shooting that night in Washington moved the sniper killings south. The next day, a woman was wounded in a craft store parking lot in Fredericksburg, Va., 50 miles from D.C.
Fear reigned. People stayed indoors, afraid to go shopping or pump gas. Authorities on television recommended ways to avoid becoming targets. Schoolchildren were kept inside at recess and drilled on duck-and-cover techniques.
Then came a lull — three days without a shooting. But on Oct. 7, 13-year-old Iran Brown was shot in the chest as he was dropped off at school in Bowie, Md., just east of Washington.
"Shooting a kid — it's getting to be really, really personal now," a tearful Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose told a news conference as the nation's collective concerns settled on its capital.
There were three more fatal sniper shootings in Virginia the next week, followed by another break — three days. Four. Five. Just long enough for people to relax, at least a little.
"We were thinking everything was going to be OK," said retired school teacher Bernice Easter, of Wheaton.
It wasn't. On Oct. 19, a man was shot outside a steakhouse in Ashland, Va., about 80 miles south of Washington. Three more days passed quietly. Then bus driver Conrad Johnson was killed in Aspen Hill, Md., not far from where the shootings began.
On Oct. 24, police captured John Allen Muhammad and teenage accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo at a rest stop 50 miles northwest of D.C. The nerve-tingling terror that had gripped the region's 5.4 million people and captivated the nation was over.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,573090,00.html
DC Sniper To Die Tonight
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