WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court turned down a request to allow the videotaping of Timothy McVeigh's execution. The court acted without comment Sunday.

The request to videotape his execution had come from lawyers in a separate case of a man who could face the same method of execution. The lawyers had argued the videotape footage could be helpful in their legal argument that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore unconstitutional.

The appeal to allow the taping went first to Justice David Souter, who has jurisdiction for matters from Pennsylvania, where a federal appeals court had denied the same request. Souter referred the matter to the entire court, spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said Sunday.

It takes five votes to grant such a last-minute request, but the court did not say how individual justices voted.

The Justice Department had asked the Supreme Court not to allow the videotaping of the execution and said it would sensationalize the Oklahoma City bomber's death. McVeigh is scheduled to be executed by injection on Monday morning.

The taping would have been done unobtrusively, and the footage would not have been released to the public, the lawyers argued in an appeal filed Saturday.

But the Justice Department said taping the execution risks sensationalizing it, and poses security and privacy problems as well.

"In light of the ubiquitous interest in the Oklahoma City bombing, the mere creation of a videotape of McVeigh's execution would present the government with unique challenges," Acting Solicitor General Barbara Underwood wrote.

The taping request came from lawyers for Joseph Minerd, a Pennsylvania man charged in a 1999 bombing that killed his pregnant former girlfriend and her daughter.

Federal prosecutors have indicated they will seek the death penalty in Minerd's case. If convicted and sentenced to death Minerd would be executed in the same Terre Haute, Ind., death chamber where McVeigh is scheduled to die for the 1995 bombing that killed 168 people and wounded scores of others.

A tape should be made to document whether the McVeigh execution goes as smoothly as the government says it will, Minerd's defense team said.

"Given the widespread attention on Mr. McVeigh's execution, problems with that execution would demonstrate that no authority could guarantee that execution by lethal injection would go smoothly," Minerd's lawyers wrote.

McVeigh's scheduled execution would be the first carried out by the federal government since 1963.

In its eight-page response, the Justice Department urged the Supreme Court not to overturn a lower court ruling that blocked the taping.

"It is well settled that the lethal injection form of execution passes muster under the Eighth Amendment" to the Constitution, barring cruel and unusual punishment, the Justice filing said.