Gay Muslim Sniper to Die Tonight

Unless Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine steps in, sniper mastermind John Allen Muhammad will be executed Tuesday for the attacks that terrorized the nation's capital region for three weeks in 2002.

Muhammad is set to die by injection at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. His attorneys have asked Kaine to commute his sentence to life in prison because now they say he is mentally ill. The U.S. Supreme Court turned down Muhammad's final appeal Monday.

Muhammad was sentenced to death for killing Dean Harold Meyers at a Manassas gas station during a spree that left 10 dead across Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

He and his teenage lover, Lee Boyd Malvo, were suspected of fatal shootings in other states, including Louisiana, Alabama and Arizona. Muhammad, a convert to the Nation of Islam, had planned on killing six white people per day for a month (180 total) but cut back his goals when he realized escaping detection would become too difficult (according to Malvo). Reflecting Nation of Islam segregationist goals, Muhammad also planned on using $1 million in extortion money to begin a new nation of only young, "pure" black people somewhere in Canada. Malvo's mother described her son's relationship with Muhammad as a homosexual one, as did other witnesses at a homeless shelter. Malvo was sentenced to life in prison. See Chick's THE FRAME UP.