Alfredo Prieto Executed in Virginia (ICYMI)

Alfredo Rolando Prieto was executed Thursday night after last-minute appeals were rejected by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Prieto, 49, was sentenced to death in the 1988 killing of two college students near Reston. He was the first Virginia inmate to be executed since Jan. 16, 2013, and the 37th inmate executed in the Commonwealth since 2000.

He was pronounced dead at 9:17 p.m. at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt.

In 1988, George Washington University graduate Rachel Raver, 22, was planning for law school at the University of Virginia. Her boyfriend, Warren Fulton III, also 22, was captain of the baseball team at George Washington University.

The students were fatally shot on a stretch of Hunter Mill Road near Reston, but their murders remained a mystery until 2005.

Prieto was on California’s death row by that time, convicted of raping and killing a 15-year-old girl. A DNA sample entered into a national database connected him to the Virginia slayings.

Last week, Texas provided execution drugs to Virginia state officials for the execution.

It prompted a legal complaint from Prieto’s lawyers, arguing that one of the drugs had not been properly tested to prevent “cruel and unusual punishment.”

U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson rejected the argument Thursday afternoon and the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals refused the appeal minutes before the execution was scheduled to take place.

Earlier this week, Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced that he would not interfere in the execution.

“Mr. Prieto was convicted in a fair and impartial trial, and a jury sentenced him to death in accordance with Virginia law,” McAuliffe said in a statement. “Federal and state appellate courts have extensively reviewed his case and denied his requested relief.”