John Allen Muhammad, the “D.C. sniper” of autumn 2002, is no more. The commonwealth of Virginia put Muhammad to death last night, Nov 12, for the murder of Dean Harold Meyers at a gas station in Northern Virginia. Muhammad and his accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, were also convicted of six murders in Maryland and suspected of three killings in other states. Malvo, who was under 18 at the time, will live.

It was a curious accident of timing that Muhammad’s execution came less than a week after the massacre at Fort Hood. This passage from an Associated Press story is reminiscent of much of the Fort Hood coverage: “I think crimes that are this horrible, you just can’t understand them, you can’t explain them,” said Kaine, a Democrat known for carefully considering death penalty cases. “They completely dwarf your ability to look into the life of a person who would do something like this and understand why.” . . .

The motive for the shootings in the nation’s capital region remains murky. Malvo said Muhammad wanted to use the plot to extort $10 million from the government to set up a camp in Canada where homeless children would be trained as terrorists. But Muhammad’s ex-wife has said she believes the attacks were a smoke screen for his plan to kill her and regain custody of their three children.

CBS News reports that Muhammad’s lawyers tried to suggest their client was depraved on account of he was deployed: Muhammad’s attorneys released a statement stating they respected the decisions of the Supreme Court and the Governor to not stay the execution, but added, “In its effort to race John Allen Muhammad to his death before his appeals could be pursued, the state of Virginia will execute a severely mentally ill man who also suffered from Gulf War Syndrome the day before Veterans Day.”

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