Serial killer wins right to be executed

A judge in Florida has accepted a plea from America's most notorious female serial killer, Aileen Wuornos, that she be allowed to face execution as soon as possible.

Ms Wuornos, sentenced to death for murdering seven middle-aged men in Florida in 1989 and 1990, has been fighting for months for the right to sack her court-appointed lawyers and forego all remaining appeals.

An appeals court in Daytona ruled on Friday that Ms Wuornos is mentally competent and should be allowed to die.

At her original trial, Ms Wuornos, 45, launched repeated vituperative verbal assaults at all those in the court, once calling jurors the "scumbags of America", because they didn't believe her claims that, as a prostitute working central Florida highways, she had killed the men only after they had raped her and threatened her life.

She admits now, however, that her defence was fabricated and that she robbed her victims and killed them out of pure hatred.

"I wanted to clear all the lies and let the truth come out," she declared at Friday's hearing. "I have hate crawling through my system".

She made a similar argument in a letter to Florida's Assistant State Attorney earlier this year, also signalling she might murder again.

It is now up to the state Supreme Court in Florida to clear the way for a "fast-track" execution procedure that could ensure Ms Wuornos is killed by lethal injection before the end of the year.

- INDEPENDENT