The state of Alabama is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the execution of an inmate scheduled for lethal injection on Thursday.
The attorney general's office asked the justices in court papers Tuesday to deny a stay requested by Ronald Bert Smith, convicted of killing Huntsville store clerk Casey Wilson in 1994.
A judge imposed death after jurors recommended life without parole, which Smith contends conflicts with a Supreme Court decision released earlier this year from Florida. Both Alabama and Florida allow judges to override jurors' recommendations in capital cases.
The state argues that the Florida decision doesn't apply to Smith's case and that he waited too long to raise his objections.
The state executed Christopher Eugene Brooks in January for the 1993 rape and beating death of a woman. It was the state's first execution since 2013.