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Knox County death row inmate set to die in August

Irick, 59 of Knox County, was convicted of the 1985 rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl

Tennessee death row inmate Billy Ray Irick is set to die in August.

The execution is scheduled for Aug. 9, 2018 at 8 p.m. eastern.

Irick, 59 of Knox County, was convicted of the 1985 rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl.

The order for Irick sets the stage for what could be the first execution in East Tennessee in nearly a decade.

He had been scheduled to die by lethal injection in January 2014, in a wave of executions Tennessee was seeking to carry out. But the Supreme Court rescheduled the execution for Oct. 7, 2014, because of new legal challenges to the way Tennessee planned to put the condemned to death.

In that time, advocates and inmates tried unsuccessfully to win a legal battle arguing against the use of lethal injection and the death penalty.

In March 2017, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled against dozens of death row inmates who'd filed suit against the practice.

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