John Allen Muhammad

A defiant John Allen Muhammad, who terrified the Washington area in 2002 as he orchestrated a series of sniper shootings, including 10 murders, was executed by lethal injection Tuesday night. Muhammad, 48, was pronounced dead at 9:11 p.m., said Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections. Asked if he wanted to make a last statement, Muhammad "did not acknowledge us," Traylor said outside the Greensville Correctional Center. The execution took place without incident, he said.

A defiant John Allen Muhammad, who terrified the Washington area in 2002 as he orchestrated a series of sniper shootings, including 10 murders, was executed by lethal injection Tuesday night. Muhammad, 48, was pronounced dead at 9:11 p.m., said Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections. Asked if he wanted to make a last statement, Muhammad "did not acknowledge us," Traylor said outside the Greensville Correctional Center. The execution took place without incident, he said.

A jury of 12 people was seated Friday for the murder trial of sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad. Opening statements in the trial of the 42-year-old Army veteran are expected to begin Monday. The jury, with three alternates, includes some members with ties to the military -- an expected mix in a community with large Navy installations. The 10 women and five men, 13 whites and two blacks were culled from a pool of 123.

Seven years ago this month, the captured Beltway snipers -- John Allen Muhammad, 41, and his accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, 17 -- were in federal custody, accused of 16 shootings and 10 murders. They had set out to create a reign of terror in the Washington area to match the 9/11 attacks of the year before. U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft had a choice: He could send them to be tried in Maryland, where most of the murders took place but where the death penalty was on hold because of the specter of racial unfairness.

Rejecting pleas for leniency, a judge Tuesday sentenced John Allen Muhammad to death for leading a two-man sniper team that killed 10 people in random attacks in the Washington area. The judge, LeRoy Millette Jr. of Prince William County Circuit Court, could have reduced to life in prison a jury's recommendation that Muhammad be executed.

TACOMA, Wash. -- They were unlikely companions. From one corner of America to another, John Allen Muhammad has lived his 41 years by his own rules. In the Army in Louisiana, where he was a B-student sharpshooter and went by his given name John Williams, he was twice court-martialed in the 1980s for disobeying orders and punching out a fellow sergeant.

TACOMA, Wash. -- Suspected sniper John Allen Muhammad had a fondness for the Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle, the model linked to 11 of the 14 shootings that terrorized the nation's capital. He bought two of them at gun shops here in the last three years -- including the suspected murder weapon, according to gun shop employees and other sources.

After speaking his mind, John Allen Muhammad has retreated into silence. His blank face, half-hidden in a cupped fist, does not betray him now. A parade of witnesses who said they glimpsed Muhammad and the car he drove have already constructed a powerful circumstantial case in the Washington-area sniper murder trial.

More than half the people needed to complete a jury in the trial of sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad had been selected Thursday, and the prosecutor said opening statements and testimony could begin Monday. Potential jurors were quizzed Thursday about their views on the death penalty, their exposure to pretrial news accounts and whether they felt terrorized by the sniper spree that killed 10 people over a three-week period last fall.

Convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad was sentenced to six consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole Thursday. "You, Mr. Muhammad, have no hope. You have no future. You will spend every day for the rest of your life locked in a cage," Judge James L. Ryan said. "You chose the wrong county to stain with your acts of violence." Muhammad, 45, looked grim as the sentence was read, and some in the audience applauded.

State officials are seeking a Nov. 9 execution for John Allen Muhammad, mastermind of the deadly 2002 sniper attacks in the Washington area. In a letter requesting the execution date, Senior Assistant Atty. Gen. Katherine B. Burnett wrote that the request had been coordinated with the governor's office to ensure consideration of an expected clemency petition. Muhammad was sentenced to death for the slaying of Dean Harold Meyers, one of 10 people killed during the shooting rampage that terrorized the nation's capital.

Convicted sniper Lee Boyd Malvo confessed to police that he and cohort John Allen Muhammad were responsible for the 2002 killing of a 60-year-old man on a Tucson golf course, authorities said. "He admitted to the killing of Jerry Taylor," said Capt. Bill Richards, a Tucson police commander. Richards said Malvo spoke to Tucson officers who visited him in jail in Montgomery County, Md. He has immunity from prosecution in the case.

One of the two serial snipers who went on a killing rampage in the Washington, D.C., area in 2002 has told law enforcement officials that they shot and killed a man in Los Angeles earlier that year. Lee Boyd Malvo admitted to being involved in the Los Angeles slaying and three other shootings in an interview with authorities this spring, the Washington Post reported.

Convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad was sentenced to six consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole Thursday. "You, Mr. Muhammad, have no hope. You have no future. You will spend every day for the rest of your life locked in a cage," Judge James L. Ryan said. "You chose the wrong county to stain with your acts of violence." Muhammad, 45, looked grim as the sentence was read, and some in the audience applauded.

John Allen Muhammad was convicted in Rockville of six sniper killings after the prosecution's star witness, Muhammad's young protege, portrayed him as the mastermind of an audacious terrorist scheme. Muhammad, 45, is already under a death sentence in Virginia for a killing there. The most he can get for the six murders committed in Maryland is life in prison without parole. The jury took slightly more than four hours to convict him after a four-week trial in which he acted as his own lawyer.

With his murder trial entering its final days, John Allen Muhammad's once-confident tone gave way Thursday to frustration and confusion as his witnesses failed to poke holes in the elaborate case put on by prosecutors and the judge refused to extend the deadline to permit him to bring in witnesses from out of state.

Lawyers for sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad on Wednesday presented a skeletal defense, finishing in three hours after challenging little of the prosecution's evidence in the Washington, D.C.-area serial murder case. Peter D.

Convicted sniper Lee Boyd Malvo told jurors Tuesday that had he and John Allen Muhammad not been caught, the pair planned to make Baltimore the center of a murderous campaign in which they would use explosives against children and police. Malvo, 21, said the scheme was "Phase 2" of a plan to kill a police officer with a weapon other than the .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle the pair had been using in the Washington area sniper rampage in 2002, then set off explosives against mourners.

A judge has granted a delay for the trial of John Allen Muhammad in the six Maryland deaths linked to the 2002 Washington-area sniper spree. Defendants are usually entitled to a trial within 180 days of arrest in Maryland or within 120 days of transfer to the state, but attorneys can ask for delays in complicated cases. After fighting extradition from Virginia, Muhammad arrived in Maryland on Aug. 22, and his trial had been set for May 1.