In this Aug 16, 2010, file photo, Billy Ray Irick, who is on death row for raping and killing a 7-year-old girl in 1985, appears in a Knoxville, Tenn., courtroom. (AP Photo/The Knoxville News Sentinel, Michael Patrick, File)
A majority of Tennessee's Supreme Court justices have denied death row inmate Billy Ray Irick's appeal for a stay of execution, according to a news release.
Irick was sentenced to death after his 1986 convictions for raping and murdering a seven-year-old child. He is scheduled to be executed on Aug. 9.
Irick and other death row inmates filed a lawsuit several years ago claiming the Tennessee Department of Correction's single-drug lethal injection protocol using pentobarbitol was unconstitutional.
The state supreme court upheld that protocol as constitutional in March 2017. In January of this year, the U.S Supreme Court refused to hear the case, and the state supreme court rescheduled the execution for Aug. 9.