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John Allen Muhammad, the D.C. Sniper, will die tonight as scheduled for one of the 10 murders he and a young accomplice committed during a killing spree that terrorized the Washington area for three weeks in October 2002. Gov. Tim Kaine declined to intervene today, one day after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from Muhammad's lawyers that their client is severely mentally ill and suffers from brain damage caused, in part, by childhood beatings.

Kaine opposes capital punishment, but pledged when he ran for governor that should he be elected, he would uphold Virginia's death penalty law. He stood by his promise.

Kaine allowed at least five other executions besides the one scheduled for tonight. He did commute a death sentence in 2008, that of Percy Walton of Danville, to comply with a Supreme Court ruling that forbids executing inmates too mentally incompetent to understand that they are to die as punishment for crimes they committed. The governor didn't accept a similar plea on behalf of Muhammad.

Put this in the political spin machine, and some might say it comes out as a political calculation: The D.C. Sniper is widely known and just as widely despised. Commuting his sentence would be politically unpopular.

Kaine isn't running for anything, though. I think, as an honorable and very thoughtful man, he weighed each appeal on its own merit, and in each case hewed to the law.

Thursday, we'll argue that Virginia lawmakers should resist the urge to call another special session of the General Assembly, this time to reverse the governor's decision to close the Natural Bridge Juvenile Correctional Center. The closing is an unfortunate repercussion of the state's steep revenue shortfall, but the decision was the governor's to make in weighing cuts to a budget already slashed in earlier rounds of reductions that left few, in any, easy choices.

We're writing an editorial for Thursday in which we will urge Congress to get cracking on oversight of forensic sciences. A National Academy of Sciences report back in February identified problems with many forensic tests that are commonly used at trial. It contained several smart recommendations, not least creation of a national oversight body to standardized tests and provide accreditation for labs. It also seeks more research into the reliability of specific forensic tests.

Congress has dilly-dallied and taken no action yet. Word is there might be some movement in the Senate, and we hope it gains steam.

Saturday, we'll express grief over the slayings of the two Virginia Tech students shot in the national forest.

In an editorial to run later in the week, we'll applaud the State Crime Commission for taking a serious look at changing a 1996 law that leaves it to prosecutors, rather than a juvenile court judge, to decide whether teenagers accused of violent crimes should be tried as adults. Child advocates argue that prosecutors are less likely than judges to look beyond the crimes at the people who commit them in deciding whether they should face hard time or remain in the juvenile system, and have a better chance at turning their lives around.