Stevens said Virginia had short-circuited the process by scheduling Muhammad’s execution for tonight, earlier than the court would normally have taken to review his petition.
Muhammad and his 17-year-old accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, were arrested seven years ago in connection with 16 shootings. Muhammad received the death penalty for murdering Dean Harold Meyers at a gas station in Manassas, Va.
After his initial appeals were dismissed by state and federal judges, Muhammad’s lawyers lodged a last set of emergency appeals with the Supreme Court last week.
Their main claim was the case has moved too quickly. They said judges in Virginia cut short the time for filing appeals and refused to hold a hearing after the trial.
Muhammad’s lawyers also have asked Governor Timothy M. Kaine of Virginia to commute his sentence to life in prison, saying Muhammad is mentally ill and should not be executed.
The killing spree began when James D. Martin was shot to death in the parking lot of a grocery store in suburban Washington.
Early the next morning, a landscaper was fatally shot in nearby Rockville, also by a .223-caliber bullet. Then a cabdriver, 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. 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.
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, Md.
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 Muhammad and 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.
