Death Row Inmate’s Attorneys Make Last Efforts to Stop Execution

Lawyers for an Alabama death row inmate are making another last-minute bid to halt his execution.

Attorneys for 46-year-old Robert Bryant Melson on Thursday filed another request with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal.

The filing came just a few hours before Melson is scheduled to die by lethal injection at a south Alabama prison. Melson was convicted of killing three people during a 1994 robbery of a fast food restaurant.

A panel of three judges on the 11th Circuit denied one stay request Thursday. The subsequent request from Melson was filed in a related case before the 11th Circuit in which other Alabama inmates are challenging the humaneness of the state’s lethal injection procedure.

The state has urged the 11th Circuit to let the execution proceed.

Melson’ lawyers wrote that he is scheduled for execution using a protocol “that has never been determined to be constitutional.”