The Alabama Supreme Court has cleared the way for the state to execute Robin “Rocky” Myers, despite a juror on his case expressing regret and pleading for the man’s life.

Myers, 63, is set to die by inhaling pure nitrogen gas sometime this spring at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. The New Jersey native has been on Alabama’s Death Row for more than 30 years.

His former lawyer missed a key deadline in 2003, ending his hopes of appeal. His lawyers have said his fate rests with Gov. Kay Ivey, as they are asking her to grant clemency.

The governor has not yet set a date for Myers to die, but the Alabama Supreme Court on Friday granted an ask from Alabama Attorney General’s Office to authorize the execution.

Myers has long claimed he is innocent of the slaying of Ludie Mae Tucker. Tucker, who was 69 and lived across the street from Myers, was stabbed to death in her Decatur home in October of 1991.

Mae Puckett, who served on the Morgan County jury in 1994, has since come forward to say she didn’t think Myers was guilty, and to ask the governor to grant Myers clemency.

“They never ever placed him in the house that night,” Puckett told AL.com in 2023.

No physical evidence ever tied Myers to the crime. Fingerprints on a stolen VCR didn’t match him, and there was no bloody clothing found in his home. The murder weapon was never recovered, either.

Tucker was inside her home when someone knocked on the door around midnight on Oct. 5, 1991. After the man entered the home, he stabbed Tucker and fled. Tucker told police she was stabbed by a short, stocky Black man, who was wearing a white or light-colored T-shirt with blood on it and possibly a plaid shirt overtop. She didn’t indicate she knew the man, police said in court. She died later that night after giving police the description.

Everyone involved agreed that Tucker knew Myers. Myers’ son, Robin LeAndrew Hood, was 11 at the time and remembered Tucker giving his family ice from the machine on her front porch. And Myers’ wife at the time, Debbie Anthony, said she knew Tucker, too.

“The one thing that I don’t understand,” she previously told AL.com. “The woman knew my husband. Why didn’t she say Rocky did it?”

Myers’ ex-wife and four children stand by him, along with at least one of the jurors who voted to convict the man at his 1994 murder trial.

There were various witnesses who pointed the finger at each other, and juror Puckett said none of the witnesses seemed reliable. She said it was nearly impossible to keep everyone’s stories straight because their tales changed so frequently. “When they put out the reward for information, everyone was fingering everybody,” she said.

During the sentencing phase, a jury recommended a sentence of life in prison without parole. Nine jurors voted for Myers to live, while three voted for death.

In the years since, Puckett has spoken out about why she voted to convict Myers even though she believed he was innocent. It was a strategic decision, she said, made along with others on the jury.

There were two or three people who wouldn’t budge on a guilty verdict. Puckett said if the trial ended in a hung jury and Myers was tried again, a second jury might send him to the electric chair.

So, she said, she and others made a deal — one that has occupied her mind for 30 years since: They would convict Myers of capital murder, but sentence him to spend his life behind bars.

She didn’t know that at the time, an Alabama law allowed judges to override a jury’s recommendation and sentence someone to death. That’s exactly what happened to Myers.

“I cried. It was a mix of anger and sympathy and remorse. I felt like I had just fed him to the wolves when we tried so hard not to do that,” said Puckett.

She hopes Ivey will save Myers’ life. “If they don’t let him go, they don’t need to kill him… They know it was shambles in the first place. Just let him live,” she told AL.com in 2023.

“I’ve thought about that man every day,” she said. “Every day of my life.”

And Anthony told AL.com she still believes in her ex-husband, too.

“I know he was easy to blame,” she said. “He wasn’t really smart, he was on drugs, he was Black. So why not?”