Convicted sniper Muhammad rejected by U.S. high court

Convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad lost a U.S. Supreme Court bid to stop his execution, scheduled for today in Virginia, for one of 10 killings that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area over three weeks in 2002.

Muhammad was convicted of killing Dean Harold Meyers, 53, in Manassas, Va., in October 2002 while Meyers was filling his car at a gas station. He is scheduled to die by lethal injection.

Muhammad, a U.S. Army veteran, and accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo were accused of carrying out the killing spree in October 2002. They were also suspects in shootings in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana and Washington state.

Muhammad was 41 at the time of the shootings, and Malvo was 17. Malvo received a life prison sentence on his conviction in Virginia of killing a woman outside a Virginia shopping center.

The Supreme Court rejected Muhammad’s application to block his execution without dissent, although Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor issued a statement criticizing the court’s procedures for handling stay applications in death penalty cases.

The high court was scheduled to review Muhammad’s appeal in a private conference on Nov. 24, said the three justices, who lamented the “perversity of executing inmates before their appeals process has been fully concluded.”