Demps, 49, on Florida's death row for the 1976 stabbing death of a fellow inmate at the state's maximum security prison, faces execution by lethal injection at 6 p.m. today unless a last-ditch appeal to a federal court wins him a reprieve.

In an hourlong news conference Tuesday at Florida State Prison, Demps said he was innocent of the murder for which he received the death sentence, his second within the same decade.

His first death sentence, for the 1971 double murder of a Winter Haven couple, was commuted to life in prison when the U.S. Supreme Court banned capital punishment the following year.

``I am innocent,'' Demps said of the 1976 death. ``I have been falsely accused of this murder, and they know it.'' He declined to discuss the 1971 killings.

Gov. Jeb Bush said Tuesday he has no intention of intervening or halting the execution despite increasing pressure by death penalty opponents.

``The execution will go on unless there's some stay by the Supreme Court,'' he said, shortly after a Capitol ceremony celebrating 8 percent pay raises for state law enforcement officers.

Corrections officials confirmed Tuesday that Demps will be the first prisoner in Florida to die for the murder of another inmate since the death penalty was reinstated.

With his voice at times rising in anger and beads of sweat forming on his face under the glare of television lights, Demps said he was framed for the stabbing death of inmate Alfred Sturgis, 23, who was serving a life sentence for second-degree murder.

Demps said that he was sentenced to death so the state could carry out the earlier execution stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision.

``They want to execute me. This case for that case,'' Demps said.

Demps, who is black, said he was singled out in part because of his race and for his earlier militant behavior in prison.

A prison guard testified that as Sturgis lay dying, he said Demps and two other inmates were responsible for the stabbing. The guard said Sturgis claimed Demps and another inmate held him down while a third prisoner stabbed Sturgis with a 10-inch handmade shank.

But Demps said a prison report unearthed in 1998 during one of his appeals clears him of complicity in the crime.

``This was the report I found 25 years after being accused,'' Demps said. ``They hid it.''

Demps said the report, written by Chief Prison Inspector and Investigator Cecil Sewell and addressed to former Department of Corrections Secretary Louis Wainwright, contradicted the earlier testimony by the guard, stating that ``before Sturgis died, he named James Jackson ... as his assailant.''

Demps said that the report mentioned only one assailant and that it failed to show that Demps was present in the cell at the time of the murder.

A Corrections spokeswoman said Tuesday that the other two inmates found guilty in the murder were sentenced to life imprisonment. She said Demps received the death penalty because of his prior convictions.

The document was rejected Monday by the state Supreme Court as insufficient to warrant a new hearing.

Demps said his attorneys were attempting a last-minute appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but chances of a reprieve were slim.

``It will only be by a miracle from God that a court hears my appeal,'' Demps said.