The U.S. Supreme Court earlier rejected without comment a bid for a stay of execution. California, which had put Prieto on death row, extradited him to Virginia. In his last statement, Prieto thanked his supporters and said, “Get it over with”, according to the Post and the Associated Press.
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Elise Cleva stands holding a sign as she participates in a moment of silence during an anti-death penalty vigil in reaction to the planned execution of Alfredo Prieto, near the Clarendon metro station in Arlington, Va., on Thursday, October 1, 2015.
Prieto’s lawyers had raised questions about one of his execution drugs, pentobarbital, which was supplied by Texas prison officials after Virginia’s supply of midazolam had passed its expiration date.
Prieto’s lawyers also appealed to the Supreme Court citing Prieto’s low IQ as an intellectual disability.
Prieto was sentenced to death in 2010 for murdering a young couple in Virginia almost two decades earlier.
Prieto’s attorneys are seeking information about the supplier of the drugs, tests confirming its sterility and potency and documents showing that the drugs were properly handled. Prison officials said in a statement that Prieto, who was put to death by lethal injection, was pronounced dead at 9:17 pm.
“Granting injunctive relief in these proceedings, then, may very well negate the Commonwealth’s ability to execute this serial murderer-rapist”, Herring’s office said.
Authorities have said Preito has been linked to as many as six other killings in California and Virginia.
Virginia plans to execute Alfredo Prieto at 9 p.m. Thursday.
Lawyers of a convicted serial killer are appealing a decision to allow his Virginia execution to go forward.
On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to halt his execution. He cited the public interest in orderly justice and said Prieto had waited years to make an 11th-hour challenge to his execution.
UPDATE: 10/1/2015 8:45 p.m. California officials agreed to send him to Virginia on the rationale that it was more likely to carry out the execution.
The lawyers say the pentobarbital comes from an “unknown compounding pharmacy and therefore has not been assessed for quality or authenticity by the” Food and Drug Administration, United States regulators. But the high court declined to grant his requests to stay the execution on Thursday.
Attorneys for a death row inmate in Virginia are pushing to spare the 49-year-old’s life as his scheduled execution nears.
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But the case has been transferred to a new judge in Richmond and it’s uncertain what action he will take. As of late Wednesday, no hearing had been set on the matter.
