A federal judge in Richmond, Virginia has lifted the temporary restraining order imposed yesterday by another judge in Alexandria, permitting the execution of serial killer Alfredo Prieto.  He is scheduled for execution for the murders of Rachael Raver and Warren Fulton in Fairfax County, Virginia.  He is also sentenced to death in California for the murder of Yvette Woodruff in San Bernardino County.  Tom Jackman has this story in the WaPo.

Prieto's claim that he is intellectually disabled was tried to a jury and rejected unanimously by them in one of his Virginia trials.  On retrial of the penalty, his lawyers considered the claim so weak they didn't even try again.

Prieto really should have been executed in California.  See Bill's post earlier today, noting a column by Debra Saunders.  The California case had already been through direct appeal and a first state habeas, the primary reviews a defendant is entitled to, before Virginia even began.  After the Virginia case was finally solved by DNA many years after the murder, that state tried the case twice and got it all the way through direct appeal, state habeas, and federal habeas while the state and federal courts in California were still stalling on secondary reviews.

A final claim in the case is that Virginia's refusal (or inability) to say where Texas got the pentobarbital it supplied to Virginia was a problem.  If the drug has been tested for potency and purity, it doesn't matter where it came from. 

Sterility is not required.  That is a concern in medicine to prevent postoperative infections, but the whole point of this procedure is that there is no post-op.  The form of pentobarbital sold for euthanasia of dogs under the trade name Euthasol says right in the product insert that it is not sterile.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied review here and here.  No dissents are noted.

Update:  Mission accomplished.  David Savage has this story in the LA Times.