A Virginia man who was convicted of raping and murdering an 88-year-old woman is set to be executed at 9 p.m. Thursday.

Jerry Terrell Jackson was sentenced to death in 2002 for raping and killing Ruth Phillips in August of 2001. He broke into her house in Williamsburg, Virginia. He took $60, which he later used to buy marijuana, and suffocated the old woman to death with a pillow while raping her at the same time, Reuters reported.

A fingerprint and DNA from hair implicated Jackson and he was found guilty.

The execution will take place at the Greensville Correctional Center, Reuters reported, which is south of Richmond. Jackson is currently one of 11 people on death row in the state of Virginia, the Daily Press reported.

Jackson's current lawyers are hoping for an intervention from the Supreme Court, their only hope after Virginia's governor, Bob McDonnell, denied clemency on Friday.

They had appealed to the state, arguing that Jackson's trial lawyers did him a disservice by not allowing his brother and sister to testify at his trial to further prove that Jackson had a troubled childhood.

Such testimony, the lawyers argue, would have given Jackson a chance at a verdict of life in prison without parole as opposed to a death sentence, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.

The Virginia Attorney General's Office disagreed, saying that lawyers gave the jury ample evidence that Jackson had a troubled childhood.

"We're just waiting and hoping for the best," lawyer Josh Toll told the Daily Press. "It could come down to the wire."

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