Dave Sweet

WMAL.com

RICHMOND — (WMAL) U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson cleared the way on Wednesday for Virginia to execute a convicted serial killer.

Alfredo Prieto, who’s execution is scheduled for 9 p.m. tonight, was previously blocked from the possibility of execution after his attorney raised concerns about one of the drugs the state intends to use for its lethal injection procedure.

Virginia officials now say there are no problem with the drugs, obtained from the Texas prison system, and that Prieto’s lawyers failed to prove that the drug in question was unsafe to use.

Prieto’s lawyers had also issued a request separately to the Supreme Court that injection should be waived because of Prieto’s “intellectual disability.”

Prieto was sentenced to death in 2010 for murdering a young couple in Virginia more than two decades earlier.

(Photo: CNN)