Court Refuses to Stop Hanging of Triple Killer : Punishment: Washington state justices clear a major hurdle to the execution, scheduled for today.

The state Supreme Court on Monday refused to halt the execution of Westley Allan Dodd, clearing a major obstacle in the convicted child killer’s quest to be hanged for his crimes.

In a one-sentence order, the court upheld Dodd’s death sentence, which was to be carried out early today. In doing so, the justices rejected a motion brought by 26 Washington residents that argued that hanging is cruel and unusual punishment banned by the state and U.S. constitutions.

Dodd, who killed three children, has waived all appeals. He has said he chose hanging over lethal injection because he hung his youngest victim’s body in a closet after killing him. He has said he must die because “I know I will kill again.”

His execution would be Washington’s first since 1963.

His lawyers could not immediately be reached after the court announced its ruling--reached on a 7-1 vote--and it was not clear what further appeal options they have.

Meanwhile, prison officials said they were prepared to carry out the execution just after midnight.

“All of the arrangements for the execution are complete,” prison spokesman Jerry Davis said Monday morning.

Death penalty opponents staged prayer meetings, vigils and demonstrations across the state. One group mounted a 24-hour vigil in the snow outside the prison.

“We come to pray for justice and not for vengeance,” said Magdelano Rose-Avila, Amnesty International’s Western regional director.

Dodd was visited by a clergyman Monday morning, said Davis. Prison officials would reveal few other details.

Dodd, a 31-year-old shipping clerk, was sentenced to death in 1990 for the 1989 sex murders of three boys in the Vancouver area in southwestern Washington. The crimes were so grisly that some of the jurors who sentenced him sought psychiatric help afterward.

Before the Supreme Court in Olympia, attorney Timothy Ford argued that hanging amounts to torture.

“Dodd has chosen hanging because he wants to be treated equally cruel,” Ford said. “The question is: Can he consent to being tortured by the state?”

Dodd’s attorney, Darrell Lee, responded that the cruelest thing to do, other than delaying the execution, would be to kill Dodd by lethal injection--the state’s only alternative to hanging. He noted that at least one execution by injection was botched because the executioner could not find a suitable vein.

“If we want to be cruel, we could stone people to death or we could burn people at the stake,” Lee said.

Dodd greatly fears medical technicians and the prospect of someone sticking a needle in his arm, Lee said.

“He wants no appeals. He wants no stays,” Lee said. “His mental and emotional condition has not changed.”

Death penalty opponents also asked Gov. Booth Gardner to commute Dodd’s sentence to life in prison. Gardner said he would not intervene.

Dodd admitted that he fatally stabbed brothers William Neer, 10, and Cole Neer, 11, in a park in September, 1989, and strangled 4-year-old Lee Iseli the next month.

In prison, he wrote a pamphlet aimed at children, titled “When You Meet a Stranger,” warning youngsters to stay away from people like him.

The last prison hangings in the United States were in 1965 in Kansas, when four murderers were hanged. Among them were Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, who became the subjects of Truman Capote’s book “In Cold Blood.”

Montana, Delaware and New Hampshire also allow hangings.