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PARKLAND, Wash. - Four Lakewood Police officers were shot and killed Sunday morning in what authorities called a targeted ambush at a coffee shop. Pierce County Sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer says the officers - four male and one female - were in full uniform and wearing bulletproof vests, sitting in Forza coffee shop near 116th Street and Steele Street on the east side of the Air Force base at about 8:30 a.m. Troyer says the officers were preparing for their shift when a suspect or suspects "walked in with a handgun, opened fire multiple times and then fled the scene,"...

A legal team is going to New York to prevent the use of evidence provided by Germany in seeking a death penalty. Berlin wants to ensure that promises made by the US are kept if the suspects are found guilty. Germany, which does not have a death penalty, provided evidence for the trial on the condition that it could not be used to support a death sentence. Several members of the al Qaeda cell that planned and executed the attacks of September 11 were previously based in the northern German city of Hamburg.

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Inmate Robert Lee Thompson was executed Thursday evening for his part in a fatal Houston store holdup after the Texas governor rejected a parole board's recommendation to spare him because he wasn't the gunman. Thompson, 34, was an accomplice to triggerman Sammy Butler who gunned down 29-year-old store clerk Mansoor Bhai Rahim Mohammed 13 years ago. Butler received life in prison. A jury gave Thompson death. Thompson's lawyer told the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles Thompson's punishment wasn't fair and the panel voted 5-2 Wednesday to recommend his sentence be commuted to life. Gov. Rick Perry...

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) on Tuesday rejected clemency for Larry "Bill" Elliott, a former military intelligence officer who killed a Woodbridge couple in their home in 2001, paving the way for his execution at 9 p.m. Tuesday. Elliott was twice convicted of killing Robert Finch, 30, and Dana Thrall, 25, who were shot several times in their townhouse. Prosecutors argued that Elliott was obsessed with Finch's ex-girlfriend and that Elliott killed him as a way to win her over. Thrall, who was living with Finch, walked in on his slaying and was then beaten and killed. A first jury's...

"The General Assembly today adopted... a moratorium on executions to be established in all States that still maintain the death penalty..." United Nations. "From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death... I feel... obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed." Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, appointed by President Nixon and author of the Roe v Wade decision. "I cannot say it more eloquently than Justice Blackmun... I must act... today I am commuting the sentences of all death row inmates... I will sleep well knowing I made the right decision."...

RICHMOND, Va. - John Allen Muhammad was executed Tuesday night for the sniper attacks in 2002 that left 10 dead and spread such fear people were afraid to go shopping, cut grass or pump gas. The three-week killing spree in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., was carried out with a teenage accomplice who is serving life in prison without parole. Muhammad, 48, died by injection at 9:11 p.m. EST after he exhausted his court appeals and Gov. Tim Kaine denied clemency. Muhammad's attorneys earlier had asked Kaine to commute his sentence to life in prison because they said he was...

JARRATT, Va. -- John Allen Muhammad, the sniper who kept the Washington region paralyzed by fear for three weeks as he and a young accomplice gunned down people at random, was executed Tuesday night by lethal injection.

Here is video of a Virginia Prison Spokesman giving a detailed preview of the upcoming execution of D.C. Sniper Mastermind John Allen Muhammad, who will be executed tonight at 9:00 PM ET. . . . (VIDEO)

JARRATT, Va. (AP) - Sniper John Allen Muhammad is meeting with relatives in the hours before his execution and one of his attorneys described the convicted killer as fearless. Attorney J. Wyndal Gordon said Muhammad had no regrets and would die with dignity Tuesday night in Virginia. Gordon also insisted that Muhammad was innocent. Gordon says Muhammad met with one of his sons before the execution and then reminisced with the attorney about the time he spent with his son before Muhammad went to prison.

D.C. sniper John Allen Muhammad is scheduled to be executed Tuesday night in Virginia. Muhammad was given the death penalty for the murder of Dean Harold Meyers, who was shot while pumping gas. In total, Muhammad and his teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, fatally shot 13 people in the Washington, D.C., area in the Fall of 2002

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) denied clemency for John Allen Muhammad on Tuesday, clearing the way for the sniper to be executed by lethal injection at 9 p.m. and putting an end to one of the most trying local criminal cases in U.S. history. Muhammad, 48, was convicted of capital murder in the slaying of Dean Harold Meyers on Oct. 9, 2002, at a gas station outside of Manassas, part of a spree that left 10 people dead in the Washington area and included shootings in several other states. A jury in Virginia Beach, where the trial was moved...

Beltway Sniper Shootings FR THREAD ARCHIVES This thread is for everyone, be sure to bookmark it. If you create a new thread, feel free to post a link to it here as well. It will be updated as often as possible. Maryland Area Prayer Thread: Pray for Metro area Freepers and Families If anyone has time today and is so inclined, you can listen to the Prince George County or Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Dispatches on the internet at http://www.sconfire.com/livedispatch.htm. The links are on the right side about halfway down. I will try to be tuning in through out...

t - 3 hrs and counting down..

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine has cleared the way for the execution of sniper John Allen Muhammad. Kaine denied Muhammad's clemency request Tuesday. Muhammad is scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday night at a Virginia prison for killing Dean Harold Meyers at a gas station during a three-week spree that left 10 people dead in 2002 across Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Hello, Mike Ruane here to talk about the DC sniper case and answer your questions. _______________________

MOUNTAIN HOME, IDAHO -- The setting sun is streaming in the living room window of Marion Lewis's house as he puts aside his cigarette and starts telling the story of the day his daughter was murdered. break He remembers the day, Oct. 3, 2002, when Lori Lewis Rivera was shot to death by the D.C. snipers at a gas station in Kensington. Two thousand miles away, her father was oblivious, out in the wilderness running a giant rock-crushing machine. Lewis stares at the floor as he recalls it, kneading his beefy hands and wiping away tears with his fingers. break...

Seven years after he and his teenage sidekick terrorised the Washington area with a three-week killing spree using a high-powered rifle, John Allen Muhammad — the “Beltway sniper” — is due to be executed tonight by lethal injection. The execution is reviving memories for the millions of people in Washington, Virginia and Maryland who spent October 2002 crouched in their cars as they pumped petrol, ducking and weaving across open spaces and running into schools with their children, glancing anxiously at nearby woods. Muhammad, a former soldier and 41 at the time, and Lee Boyd Malvo, then 17, triggered the...

The Supreme Court Monday denied John Allen Muhammad's request to stay his execution, clearing the way for Virginia to put to death the man who terrorized the Washington region as the Beltway Sniper. Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor objected to the court's haste, saying it "highlights once again the perversity of executing inmates before their appeals process have been fully concluded." Stevens, writing for the three, said Virginia had short-circuited the process by scheduling Muhammad's execution for Tuesday night, earlier than the court would normally have reviewed his petition for the court to take his...

Convicted Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad is filing last-minute appeals, trying to avoid a Tuesday appointment in Virginia's death chamber. The legal scramble is reviving memories for countless in the D.C. region who lived through the three weeks in October 2002 when Muhammad and his ward, Lee Boyd Malvo, went on a rampage that terrorized the capital region. Picking out strangers at random, they opened fire from a hole cut in an old car, leaving notes behind to taunt police and to celebrate the carnage they inflicted. By the time the pair was finished, 10 were dead, three were wounded...

RIYADH (Reuters) - A Saudi court of cassation upheld a ruling to behead and crucify a 22-year-old man convicted of raping five children and leaving one of them to die in the desert, newspapers reported on Tuesday. International rights groups have accused the kingdom, the birthplace of Islam, of applying draconian justice, beheading murderers, rapists and drug traffickers in public.