JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man who wanted to avoid execution suffered a double setback Monday as the state’s Supreme Court and governor both rejected his request to cancel his planned lethal injection.

Marcellus Williams will be executed at 6 p.m. Tuesday for the 1998 murder of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former newspaper reporter who was repeatedly stabbed during a burglary at her suburban St. Louis home.

Missouri Governor Mike Parson, a Republican, rejected Williams’s request for clemency to spare him the death penalty and instead sentenced him to life in prison. The Missouri Supreme Court also rejected a request at almost the same time to quash the execution so that a lower court could take another decision on whether a prosecutor had wrongly excluded a potential black juror on racial grounds.

Williams’ attorneys still have an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Williams, 55, has maintained his innocence. But his attorney did not pursue that claim further in state Supreme Court on Monday, focusing instead on alleged procedural errors in jury selection and the prosecution’s alleged mishandling of the murder weapon.

The state Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, affirmed a lower court’s ruling that rejected Williams’ arguments.

“Despite nearly a quarter century of litigation in both state and federal courts, there is no credible evidence of actual innocence or any evidence of a constitutional error that undermines confidence in the original judgment,” Justice Zel Fischer wrote in the state Supreme Court ruling.

Parson said Williams was given ample legal opportunities to prove his innocence and accused Williams’ lawyers of trying to “muddy the waters surrounding DNA evidence” with claims that the courts have repeatedly rejected.

“Nothing in the actual facts of this case has led me to believe in Mr. Williams’ innocence,” Parson said in a statement. “As such, Mr. Williams’ sentence will be carried out as ordered by the Supreme Court.”

Parson, a former sheriff, has never granted clemency in a case involving the death penalty.

St. Louis County District Attorney Wesley Bell has sought to have Williams’ sentence set aside, citing questions about his guilt. He plans to appeal the Missouri Supreme Court ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, spokesman Chris King said.

“Even for those who disagree with the death penalty, the irreversible punishment of execution should not be an option if there is even a shadow of doubt about a defendant’s guilt,” Bell said in a statement.

Williams’ case is being championed by the Midwest Innocence Project.

“Missouri is on the verge of executing an innocent man, an outcome that calls into question the legitimacy of the entire criminal justice system,” said Tricia Bushnell, an attorney with the Midwest Innocence Project.

Williams’ execution would be the third in Missouri this year and the 100th since the state resumed executions in 1989.

This is the third time Williams has faced execution. He was less than a week away from execution in January 2015 when the state Supreme Court ruled I called it offwhich gave his lawyers time to conduct additional DNA testing.

He was just hours away from execution in August 2017 when then-Governor Eric Greitens, a Republican, postponement granted And a panel appointed of retired judges to investigate the case. But that panel never came to a conclusion.

Questions about DNA evidence also led to Bell requests a hearing Williams’ guilt. But days before the August 21 hearing, new tests showed that the DNA on the knife belonged to members of the Public Prosecution Service who had handled the knife without gloves after the original forensic testing.

Because there was no DNA evidence to point to an alternative suspect, attorneys with the Midwest Innocence Project reached a compromise with the prosecution: Williams would enter a new, no-contest plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence: life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Judge Bruce Hilton signed the agreement, as did Gayle’s family. But at the urging of Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey, the Missouri Supreme Court blocked the agreement and ordered Hilton to proceed with a evidence hearingwhich took place on August 28.

The prosecutor in the 2001 murder trial testified at the August hearing that the jury was fair, even though there was only one black member on the panel. He said he rejected a potential black juror in part because he looked too much like Williams — a statement that Williams’ attorneys argued showed undue racial bias.

Hilton ruled on September 12 that the first-degree murder conviction and the death penalty would stand, noting that Williams’ arguments had all been previously rejected. That decision was upheld Monday by the state Supreme Court.

Prosecutors at Williams’ original trial said that on Aug. 11, 1998, he broke into Gayle’s home, heard water running in the shower and found a large butcher knife. Gayle, a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was stabbed 43 times when she came downstairs. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen.

According to authorities, Williams stole a jacket to cover up the blood on his shirt. Williams’ girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. The girlfriend said she later saw the bag and the laptop in his car and that Williams sold the computer a day or two later.

Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was incarcerated on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors that Williams confessed to the killing and provided details about the killing.

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Salter reported from O’Fallon, Missouri.