(RTTNews) - Tim Kaine, the governor of the U.S. State of Virginia, on Tuesday rejected a plea for clemency filed by John Allen Muhammad, the mastermind of the deadly 2002 sniper attacks in Washington DC area, just hours before his imminent execution later in the day.

A day earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had rejected an appeal to stay Muhammad's execution. Though Muhammad's lawyers argued that their client should be spared the death penalty on grounds of mental illness, but the court rejected their appeal without providing any reasons for doing so.

Muhammad will now be executed as scheduled later in day, as the rejection of the clemency petition by Gov. Kaine effectively ended his only hope to avoid execution.

Muhammad is scheduled for execution later on Tuesday by lethal injection at the Greensville Correctional Center in Virginia for the October 2002 killing of Dean Harold Meyers at a gas station in Manassas, Virginia.
Muhammad and his former teenage accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo are suspected of at least ten fatal shootings in Louisiana, Alabama and Arizona, before they were arrested on 24th October 2002.

However, Muhammad was sentenced only for one killing. The duo's motive for the killings using a high-power sniper rifle is not yet clear.

Malvo, however, was spared the death sentence as he was a juvenile at the time of the killing spree. He is currently is serving a life sentence without the chance of parole at a maximum security prison in Virginia.

by RTT Staff Writer

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