Virginia executes multiple murderer from El Salvador

Convicted Virginia serial killer Alfredo Prieto was executed by lethal injection on Thursday night, the Washington Post and ABC News reported.

Prieto’s lawyers had also argued he should not be executed because he was intellectually disabled.

Mr. Prieto was convicted of the 1988 murder of a Virginia couple and the rape and murder of a 15-year-old California girl. Prieto was accompanied by an attorney, it said.

Virginia officials say there are no problems with the drugs, which they obtained from Texas’s prison system.

The other two victims were stabbed but survived to testify against Prieto.

“It is time for this to end”, said Margaret O’Shea, a lawyer from Attorney General Mark Herring’s office, who urged the judge to dismiss Prieto’s appeal on Thursday.

The Supreme Court had earlier in the day declined to grant a stay based on Prieto’s claims that he was intellectually disabled.

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.

Hudson rejected claims by Prieto’s lawyers that pentobarbital used by Virginia officials might not be potent or sterile enough to prevent the inmate from feeling severe pain during the lethal injection. This after, Virginia discontinued its use of the controversial drug Midazolam. Not at all like in California, Virginia has done executions of most detainees who have been sentenced to death. She said the company sent several letters to Virginia officials when Mylan learned about the drug’s possible use and then demanded that the state return the product when it received no response. California has had 747 inmates sentenced to death, but has carried out only 13 executions since 1976.

The state has been planning to execute Alfredo Prieto at 9 p.m. on Thursday but it’s unclear whether that will take place.

Republican Governor Mary Fallin said the state needed time to address questions about the use of potassium acetate as a substitute in the three-drug lethal injection cocktail and ensure it complies with court-approved protocols.

As of Wednesday evening, no judge had been assigned in Richmond and no hearings had been scheduled.

His lawyers argued the state should reconsider whether Prieto is intellectually disabled because the measure used during his 2008 trial was unconstitutional.