Virginia executed a convicted murderer Thursday night.
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The state had been planning to execute Alfredo Prieto at 9 p.m. Thursday at the Greensville Correctional Center, but it was unclear whether that will take place.
However, with the clock ticking, it remained to be seen if the execution would proceed as planned at 9pm (local time) after lawyers for the El Salvador native said they had filed an appeal.
Attorneys for Prieto, 49, wanted his execution delayed as they seek more information about the drugs, which were obtained from Texas’ prison system. The group’s executive director says it’s shameful that Virginia continues would kill a man who might have had an intellectual disability.
Prieto’s main attorney, Robert Lee, complained that he had filed an 11th hour appeal on behalf of his client with the US Supreme Court, but that the execution was carried out before the United States highest court could render a decision.
Prieto looked calm as he entered the execution chamber at 8:53 p.m. The warden stepped behind the curtain at 9:09 p.m. and shortly afterward officials began administering the drugs.
All of Prieto’s victims were abducted by him.
Prieto’s attorneys also have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the execution, arguing that he’s intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for the death penalty.
He was sentenced to death in 2010 for murdering a young couple in Virginia more than two decades earlier.
Prieto’s attorneys also want tests confirming the drug’s sterility and potency and documents showing that the drugs were properly handled, transported and stored.
Attorneys for a death row inmate in Virginia are pushing to spare the 49-year-old’s life as his scheduled execution nears.
Alfredo Preito became the first inmate to be executed in Virginia in nearly three years on Thursday. The manufacturer of one of the drugs that Virginia officials plan to use to execute a death row inmate this week says it demanded that the state return the drugs when it learned of their intended use.
U.S. states using the death penalty have faced obstacles over shortages of lethal injection drugs after European suppliers stopped supplying pentobarbital for use in executions.
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He has been connected to as many as six other killings in California and Virginia, authorities have said, but he was never prosecuted because he had already been sentenced to death.
