His lawyers filed appeals and a request for a stay of execution on his behalf with the high court this month. Gov. Bob McDonnell turned down his plea to intervene last week.
Walker, 37, was convicted in a 1998 trial of shooting two men to death in front of loved ones. State law permits the death penalty for someone who commits two premeditated murders within three years.
Stanley Beale, 36, was slain on the night of Nov. 22, 1996, and Clarence Elwood Threat, 34, early on the morning of June 19, 1997. Each man was shot repeatedly by a gunman who kicked in their apartment doors.Walker accused Beale of coming to his door to look for him. Beale did not know Walker.
Threat’s girlfriend said Walker once had asked her for a date but said she turned him down because she was committed to Threat.
Members of the victims’ families had not responded to requests for comment as of yesterday evening.
Walker’s lawyers argue that he is mentally retarded and therefore ineligible for the death penalty. A split panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Walker had not proved that he fit the legal definition for mental retardation.
His lawyers argued in a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court that Walker’s joint trial for the unrelated murders “exposed him to the serious risks that two weak cases would bolster one another, and that the jury might convict based on a presumed propensity for crime.“
They also contend that authorities improperly withheld evidence that could have challenged the credibility of a key witness. They said Beale’s 13-year-old daughter originally told police she heard but did not see the shooter but testified later that she saw Walker shoot her father.
Walker’ s lawyers did not learn of the girl’s earlier statement until after the trial.
A social history prepared on Walker’s behalf in 2003, when he was 30, said he functioned at the level of an 11-year-old, that he may suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome, and that he has a family history of both mental illness and mental retardation.
His lawyer, Danielle Spinelli, said in an e-mail this week that Walker and his family were not speaking to the media.
Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections, said no victim family members had requested to witness the execution. Walker’s would be the second execution in Virginia this year and the 107th since the death penalty was allowed to resume in 1976.
Virginians For Alternatives to the Death Penalty will hold a vigil outside the Greensville Correctional Center tonight at 8:30. Vigils also will be held at churches and other sites across the state. For details, go to http://www.vadp.org/.
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