A Missouri man is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Tuesday evening after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the state to proceed with its plan to execute him, rejecting a last-ditch request to intervene on his behalf.

The justices rejected two separate appeals to spare Marcellus Williams’ life, over the objection of Liberal Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, a day after the Missouri Supreme Court and Republican Gov. Mike Parson declined to step in on Williams’ behalf.

Williams, 55, has long maintained innocence in the 1998 death of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former newspaper reporter who was repeatedly stabbed during a burglary of her suburban St. Louis home. The execution is opposed both by Gayle’s family and the prosecutor’s office that put Williams on death row — an unprecedented combination.

“The family defines closure as Marcellus being allowed to live,” the clemency petition stated. “Marcellus’ execution is not necessary.”

Williams is among inmates in five states who are scheduled to be executed in the span of a week — an unusually high number that defies a yearslong decline in the use and support of the death penalty in the U.S. The first was carried out Friday in South Carolina. The others are scheduled to take place in Texas on Tuesday, and in Oklahoma and Alabama on Thursday.

Williams’ hopes of having his sentence commuted to life in prison suffered dual setbacks Monday when, almost simultaneously, Parson denied clemency and the Missouri Supreme Court declined to grant a stay of execution.

Attorneys working on Williams’ behalf filed motions late Monday challenging the state Supreme Court’s decision.

“We have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay Marcellus Williams’ execution on Tuesday based on a revelation by the trial prosecutor that he removed at least one Black juror before trial based on his race,” Tricia Bushnell, an attorney for Mr. Williams, said in a statement.

The prosecutor in the 2001 murder case, Keith Larner, testified at an August hearing that he struck one potential Black juror partly because he looked too much like Williams — a statement which Williams’ attorneys asserted showed improper racial bias.

Bushnell said Larner removed six of seven Black prospective jurors. The jury ultimately had 11 white members and one Black member. Larner contended that the jury selection process was fair.

The Missouri attorney general’s office filed a response Tuesday saying the only effect of a stay of execution would be another delay in a case “that has already been delayed many years through Williams’ litigation of meritless claims.”

The state Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision Monday afternoon, affirmed a lower court ruling rejecting Williams’ arguments.

Parson accused Williams’ attorneys of trying to “muddy the waters about DNA evidence” with claims that courts have repeatedly rejected.

“Nothing from the real facts of this case have led me to believe in Mr. Williams’ innocence,” Parson said in a statement.

Parson, a former sheriff, has never granted clemency in a death penalty case. Williams’ execution would be the third in Missouri this year and the 100th since the state resumed executions in 1989.

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell has sought to set aside Williams’ sentence, citing questions about his guilt. His office joined lawyers from the Midwest Innocence Project in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to grant a stay.

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

This marks the third time Williams has faced execution. He was less than a week away from lethal injection in January 2015 when the state Supreme Court called it off, allowing time for his attorneys to pursue additional DNA testing.

He was hours away from being executed in August 2017 when then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay and appointed a panel of retired judges to examine the case. But that panel never reached a conclusion.