The Alabama Supreme Court has authorized the execution of death row inmate Gregory Hunt for the 1988 beating death of a Walker County woman.

All nine justices on the court, in a ruling issued Thursday, unanimously authorized the execution beginning no less than 30 days from the date their order was issued. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey will now have to set an execution date.

Attorneys for Hunt had not responded to a request by AL.com for comment prior to publication of this story.

The Alabama Attorney General’s Office on March 3 had asked the court to authorize Hunt’s execution.

In June 1990 a jury found Hunt guilty and by a vote of 11 to 1 recommended he be put to death for the Aug. 2, 1988 murder of Karen Lane in Walker County.

Lane was murdered in a Cordova apartment she shared with another young woman, according to court records. She suffered a total of 60 injuries, according to court appeal records. The indictment charging Hunt alleged that he had used his hands, fists, broom stick, and a bar stool to attack Lane.

Fingerprints and witness testimony linked Hunt to the scene, court records show.

Hunt is to be executed using nitrogen gas.

Hunt was part of a multi-plaintiff lawsuit that was dismissed in 2018 challenging the state’s three-drug lethal injection method. Court records show John Palombi, a federal public defender for the Middle District of Alabama, and Deputy AG Thomas Govan filed a motion to dismiss the case because the inmates named in the lawsuit, including Hunt, elected a new form of execution, nitrogen hypoxia, which was made legal that same year.

Alabama first used nitrogen hypoxia in an execution last year and has since executed three others using the method.