JACKSON, Ga. (AP) — Georgia was set to execute a man for the shooting death of a sheriff’s deputy after a convenience store robbery in 1995.

Robert Wayne Holsey, 49, was scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Tuesday at the state prison in Jackson. A jury in 1997 convicted Holsey of killing Baldwin County sheriff’s deputy Will Robinson.  

Holsey robbed a Milledgeville convenience store early on Dec. 17, 1995, and the clerk called police right after he left and gave a description of the suspect and his car, according to court records.  

Robinson stopped a red Ford Probe at a nearby hotel minutes later and radioed in the license plate number. As Robinson approached the vehicle, Holsey fired at him, prosecutors said. The deputy suffered a fatal head wound.  

Holsey fled the scene but sheriff’s deputies found him a short time later at his sister’s house and arrested him.

Robinson’s family released a statement Tuesday thanking the people who have supported them over the years.

“William was a leader and true hero, evidenced by the years of outpouring of support to our family by all who loved and respected him,” the Robinson family said. “As Georgia’s justice system and the federal courts have played, replayed, visited and revisited the evidence surrounding William’s murder through its due process these nineteen years, we simply have hoped for the judicial process to unfold and to reach a final conclusion.”

On Tuesday, Holsey received visits in prison from seven family members and some friends, three clergy members and a lawyer. Authorities also said he requested a last meal of fried chicken.

Holsey’s lawyers argued in a clemency petition that their client should be spared lethal injection because his 1997 trial was mishandled by an alcoholic lawyer who was distracted by his own problems. The trial lawyer died in 2011.

Prince told the court that intellectual disability would not be a factor in the case, despite records showing Holsey was intellectually disabled, Holsey’s lawyers argued.

And the jury also didn’t hear details about Holsey’s childhood, which was characterized by horrifying abuse at the hands of his mother, according to the petition.

Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills, who was chief deputy sheriff in Baldwin County at the time of Robinson’s killing and the lead investigator on the case, said the original trial lawyer was a very qualified lawyer who very effectively represented Holsey.

Holsey’s lawyers asked both the Georgia Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution, arguing that Holsey is intellectually disabled. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 barred execution of the intellectually disabled, but left the states to determine who is intellectually disabled.

Georgia requires death row inmates to prove intellectual disability beyond a reasonable doubt in order to be spared execution on those grounds. Courts have consistently upheld Georgia’s toughest-in-the-nation standard of proof on this issue.

But the U.S. Supreme Court in May knocked down a Florida law that said any inmate who tests above 70 on an IQ test is not intellectually disabled and may be executed. The opinion said IQ tests have a margin of error and inmates whose scores fall within the margin must be allowed to present other evidence of intellectual disability.  

The U.S. Supreme Court decision from May says states cannot ignore the medical and psychiatric community’s diagnostic practices and definitions, and clinical diagnoses are made to “a reasonable medical certainty” and not beyond a reasonable doubt, Brian Kammer, a lawyer for Holsey, argued in court filings. Therefore, the high court ruling invalidates Georgia’s uniquely high standard for proving intellectual disability, Kammer wrote.

The state of Georgia argued in court filings that Holsey is not intellectually disabled. An expert found that Holsey had a learning disability but was not disabled, and his siblings relied on him as a leader, the state’s lawyers argued.