Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh let a deadline for a clemency appeal against his execution pass without acting on it, ending any prospect of a reprieve from his death sentence.
Today’s deadline passed without any action from McVeigh or his attorneys, the US Justice Department said.
Under federal guidelines, the former Gulf War veteran had one month after his execution date was set January 16 to file a clemency appeal asking the president to spare his life.
Lawyers for the 32-year-old had drawn up the papers in case he wished to seize the last chance of a reprieve from his May 16 execution by lethal injection.
But the prospect seemed unlikely: in January McVeigh waived any further appeals in his case and in a letter to the Oklahoman newspaper, published last Sunday, he called for his execution to be publicly televised.
"I believe his mind is set," Rob Nigh, an attorney for McVeigh told CNN.
250 people, including survivors and families of the victims of the April 1995 bombing of federal building which killed 168 people, have requested the right to view the execution, according to Oklahoma officials.
Unable to accommodate that number of spectators in the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, where the execution will take place, the US Bureau of Prisons is considering a closed-circuit television link for the bereaved and the survivors in Oklahoma City.
According to prosecutors, McVeigh masterminded the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in the worst act of terrorism ever recorded on US soil in retaliation for what he perceived as the government's mishandling of the deadly siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993.
AFP