But Circuit Judge Stan Morris refused to delay Demps' execution, scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday, or to let Gainesville attorney George Schaefer withdraw from the case.

With just days left before Demps' scheduled execution, legal proceedings in his appeal Thursday focused more on who is representing him than on claims of innocence or injustice.

Schaefer, a private lawyer in Gainesville, was appointed two days ago by Morris to help out another Gainesville attorney who has represented Demps since August.

But lawyer Bill Salmon has argued that he agreed to represent Demps just at the trial level - and that part of the case is essentially over since Circuit Judge Robert Cates rejected Demps' appeal Monday and refused to reconsider his decision Tuesday.

If they want to pursue the issue, they'll have to ask the state Supreme Court.

Neither Schaefer nor Salmon returned phone calls Thursday.

Schaefer's argued in his petition to Morris Thursday that he hasn't even had a chance to review the full file, which is "reportedly voluminous and in a disorganized state" or to meet with Demps.

"The undersigned cannot competently represent the defendant in his appeal with less than three business days before the scheduled execution," Schaefer wrote.

Demps, 49, was first sent to death row for two 1971 murders in Winter Garden.

But those death sentences were reduce to life prison terms when the U.S. Supreme court halted capital punishment across the country in 1972 because it was so arbitrary.

Before the end of the year, Florida became the first state in the nation to write a new death penalty law. In 1976, the nation's high court upheld Florida's death penalty statute.

A couple of months later, prison guards at Florida State Prison found Alfred Sturgis bleeding in his cell. On his way to a hospital, Sturgis told a prison guard that Demps and another inmate held him down while a third stabbed him.

Demps was sentenced to death. The other two were sentenced to life in prison.

In 1981, the Florida Supreme Court upheld Demps' death sentence, rejecting his argument that it couldn't stand because the other two inmates received lesser sentences.

Only Demps had the "loathsome distinction of having been previously convicted of the first-degree murder of two persons and attempted murder of another, escaping the gallows only through the intervention of Furman v. Georgia," the high court wrote in its unsigned decision, citing the 1972 decision that vacated death sentences across the country.

Since then, Demps has avoided three scheduled electrocutions.

Demps, a Vietnam veteran, was originally condemned for the murders of R.N. Brinkworth and Celia Puhlick, who were fatally shot in a Lake County citrus grove.

The victims were inspecting some land for sale when they happened upon Demps, who had fled to the grove with a stolen safe. Mrs. Puhlick's husband, Nicholas, was wounded.

Gov. Jeb Bush signed a death warrant for Demps on April 24. His latest appeal is based on a memo by a prison employee written the day after Sturgis' murder.

The memo talks about the attack by a single "assailant" and Salmon argued that it could have been used to cast doubt on the prosecution testimony against Demps.