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WASHINGTON: A US judge was to consider Thursday whether the state of Virginia can proceed with the execution of repeat murderer Alfredo Prieto who has challenged the use of a lethal injection drug.
Prieto has been convicted or linked by evidence to nine murders, the Washington Post reported, including the 1988 shootings of Rachael Raver and Warren Fulton III on the outskirts of the US capital.
Authorities say they believe he also raped four of his victims, including a 15-year-old girl in California, where he was arrested in 1990, according to the newspaper.
Prieto's execution was slated for 9 pm (0100 GMT) Thursday but it has been temporarily put on hold by a US District Court judge in Alexandria, Virginia, after his lawyers challenged the planned use of one of three drugs to be included in the lethal injection.
Thursday's hearing with Judge Henry Hudson was set for 1 pm (1700 GMT) in the state capital Richmond and would include representatives from the state's attorney general's office and Prieto's lawyers, said a source in the judge's office.
After several motions are considered, Hudson was to issue an opinion by the end of the day, the source said, leaving open the possibility that the execution could still take place.
The United States remains the only Western country to maintain the death penalty and has carried out 21 executions so far this year.
On Wednesday, the governor of Oklahoma issued a last-minute 37-day stay of execution for an inmate convicted of ordering a murder, amid questions over one of the lethal injection drugs.
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.
Prieto's attorneys at the Virginia Capital Representation Resource Center filed a lawsuit seeking to temporarily postpone his execution in order to obtain details about the use of compounded pentobarbital that it said the state of Virginia recently received from the state of Texas.
"The lawsuit argues that use of the purported pentobarbital imposes an exceptional and entirely unnecessary risk of a cruel and painful execution," the lawyers said in a news release.
The lawyers say the pentobarbital comes from an "unknown compounding pharmacy and therefore has not been assessed for quality or authenticity by the" Food and Drug Administration, US regulators.
US states using the death penalty have faced crises over shortages of lethal injection drugs after European suppliers stopped supplying pentobarbital for use in executions.
The shortages have prompted prison departments in the states that still allow the death penalty to seek new supply sources or new drug protocols.
AFP
