Execution of Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad is on schedule

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Seven years ago this month, the captured Beltway snipers -- John Allen Muhammad, 41, and his accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, 17 -- were in federal custody, accused of 16 shootings and 10 murders. They had set out to create a reign of terror in the Washington area to match the 9/11 attacks of the year before.

U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft had a choice: He could send them to be tried in Maryland, where most of the murders took place but where the death penalty was on hold because of the specter of racial unfairness. Or he could send them across the Potomac River to Virginia, the site of three of the killings and where death sentences are carried out swiftly.

Read the full report from David Savage in Washington.