A death row inmate who is facing imminent execution claims he has evidence showing he didn't handle the murder weapon.
Oscar Smith, 72, is scheduled to be killed via the lethal injection on Thursday, having spent more than 30 years on Tennessee's death row.
He was convicted of murdering his estranged wife Judith Robirds Smith, 35, and her teen sons from a previous marriage - 16-year-old Chad Burnett and 13-year-old Jason Burnett - inside a home in Nashville in 1989.
Smith was shot in the neck and stabbed several times.
Chad was shot in the left eye and then in the upper chest and left torso while his younger brother was stabbed in the neck and abdomen.
Smith, who was 40 at the time, allegedly threatened to kill Judith on at least 12 occasions.
During the investigation, a bloody handprint — missing two fingers — was found on a bedsheet beside Judith's body.
Smith is missing two fingers, and was engaged in a custody battle for their three-year-old twins at the time.
Their mother had also filed multiple domestic violence charges against him in recent months, for both her and her two teenage sons.
In 1990 Smith was sentenced to death for three counts of capital murder.
He has maintained his innocence throughout his time in prison, and now looks set for execution tomorrow.
State governor Bill Lee announced Tuesday he would not intervene to stop the execution - meaning little now stands in the way of Smith and the lethal injection.
“After thorough consideration of Oscar Smith’s request for clemency and an extensive review of the case, the State of Tennessee’s sentence will stand, and I will not be intervening," Lee wrote in an emailed statement.
Smith filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging his First Amendment rights are being violated by Tennessee courts refusing to hear his case, it was reported.
He claims that there is evidence showing he is not the person who handled the murder weapon.
However, he has exhausted his appeal through local criminal courts, appellate courts and the Tennessee Supreme Court.
The attorney general's office has argued that the courts have already addressed the DNA issue.
Late on Monday night Smith was moved into a cell next to the execution chamber and put on death watch.
Smith filed the federal suit a few hours after the Tennessee Supreme Court's denial to hear the case exhausted his state court appeals.
