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VIRGINIA (USA): ALFREDO PRIETO EXECUTED AFTER LAST-MINUTE APPEALS, INCLUDING POPE FRANCIS’S, FAILED
October 1, 2015: Alfredo Prieto was executed today after a series of last-minute appeals failed. Pope Francis’s representatives in Washington wrote to Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe Wednesday, asking him to call off the looming execution of serial killer Alfred Prieto. “The U.S. Apostolic Nuncio wrote a letter on behalf of the Holy Father to Governor McAuliffe, asking that Mr. Prieto not be executed,” said Jeff Caruso, executive director of the Virginia Catholic Conference.
A spokesman for McAuliffe (D) confirmed that the governor received the letter but said he could not immediately provide a copy or any details of the letter, which was first reported by Washingtonian. “We did receive a letter today,” spokesman Brian Coy said. McAuliffe, a Catholic who attended a White House greeting ceremony for the pope last week, has not always been in step with his church or party on the death penalty.
Although the Democratic base opposes capital punishment, McAuliffe supported it when he ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2009, according to news reports from the time. More recently, McAuliffe’s office has said that he personally opposes the death penalty but would not let his personal feelings on keep him from upholding the law.
McAuliffe supported legislation this year intended to shield makers of lethal injection drugs from public pressure by exempting the companies’ names from the state’s open records laws. On Monday, McAuliffe said he would not intervene to stop Prieto’s execution— the first since McAuliffe to took office in January 2014.
Prieto, 49, Hispanic, was convicted in Virginia in 2010 of the fatal 1988 shootings of Rachael A. Raver and Warren H. Fulton III outside of Reston.
Prieto was on death row in California at the time for raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl and was linked to the Virginia slayings through DNA evidence. California officials agreed to send him to Virginia on the rationale that it was more likely to carry out the execution. He has been connected to as many as six other killings in California and Virginia in a two-year span from 1988 to 1990, authorities have said, but he was never prosecuted because he had already been sentenced to death. Prieto entered the execution chamber at 8:53 p.m. The warden stepped behind the curtain at 9:09 p.m. and shortly afterward officials began administering the drugs. Prieto's chest rose and fell several times but he made no sounds. He was motionless after a few minutes.
Alfredo Prieto was pronounced dead at 9:17 p.m. at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. Prieto was injected with a lethal three-drug combination, including the sedative pentobarbital, which Virginia received from the Texas prison system.
Prieto's attorneys filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to halt the execution until Virginia officials disclose more information about the supply of pentobarbital, which Virginia received from Texas because another sedative it planned to use expired. They said they were concerned about the quality of the drugs and they fear that they will cause a cruel and painful death. U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga initially ordered Wednesday that Virginia prison officials postpone the execution of Prieto, scheduled for Thursday night, until the court can rule on whether a drug used in the execution process would cause Prieto unnecessary pain. Trenga scheduled a hearing on the drug issue for Thursday afternoon in Alexandria, creating the possibility that the execution could proceed as scheduled Trenga ruled against Prieto. But late Wednesday, at the state’s request, Trenga moved the case to Richmond, where attorneys on both sides work. No new judge or hearing date was immediately set, but federal judge in Richmond could convene a hearing on Thursday or decide the case solely on the briefs. But U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson lifted a temporary order blocking Prieto's execution on Thursday, saying that Prieto's lawyers had not adequately shown that the drugs are unsafe. He said unwarranted delay of the execution would be harmful for those victimized by Prieto's crimes, a harm "magnified here by the appalling number of people that Prieto has killed, raped, or otherwise injured."
Prieto is the first inmate to be executed in in Virginia in nearly three years.
He becomes the first inmate executed this year in Virginia and the 111st overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982, the 22nd this year in the USA, and the 1416th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977. (Sources: Associated Press, Hands off Cain, 01/10/2015)
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