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The U.S. Supreme Court decided Wednesday to lift the stay of execution of an inmate facing death for the 1996 slaying of an elderly Christiansburg woman.

The decision clears the way for the setting of an execution date for James Edward Reid. But it does not mean Reid is barred from raising the claim that his execution would constitute "cruel and unusual punishment," which is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution, said one of Reid's attorneys, Jimmy Turk of Radford. Reid is on death row for the brutal killing of 87-year-old Annie Lester.

The Supreme Court's brief order Wednesday is probably not the last word on a case that has wended its way through various courts for eight years.

"We still certainly intend to pursue several legal issues from this point forward," Turk said.

Montgomery County Circuit Judge Ray Grubbs, who sentenced Reid to death in 1998, has scheduled a conference call in the case for today, Turk said.

Attorney General Jerry Kilgore's office plans to ask Grubbs to set an execution date for Reid, said Kilgore's press secretary, Tim Murtaugh. Grubbs is required by law to set the execution date within 60 days, Turk said.

The Supreme Court made its ruling in response to a request from Kilgore's office, Murtaugh said. The 5-4 ruling did not specify a reason for the decision. The attorney general's office had argued that the stay of execution that the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued in the case Dec. 17 was moot.

The appeals court, in Richmond, issued the stay the day before Reid was scheduled for execution. The appeals court said at the time that it issued the stay because the U.S. Supreme Court had agreed to hear a similar case involving an Alabama inmate who claimed that lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment. The appeals court wanted to see how the higher court would rule.

The Alabama inmate's past drug use would have required prison officials to cut into his leg to find a vein to administer a lethal injection. Reid's attorneys made a similar argument about the collapse of veins in his arms.

But Murtaugh said Reid had not raised the same claims as the Alabama inmate. Based on that argument, the attorney general's office asked the Supreme Court in July to lift the stay, Murtaugh said. The Supreme Court had denied an earlier request to lift the stay.

Whatever date is set, the attorney general's office views it as a real execution date, Murtaugh said.

"When you get to this point in a case like this, naturally the attention seems to focus on the inmate," Murtaugh said. "But we prefer to focus on the victim and her family and remember all the pain that they have suffered."

Sgt. Curtis Brown, a detective with the Christiansburg Police Department who is Lester's great-nephew, said he rejected the "cruel and unusual punishment" argument that Reid's attorneys have made.

"It's kind of hard for me to have any sympathy, since my great-aunt was stabbed 22 times, she was raped, she was beaten" in the head with a can of condensed milk, and she was strangled with an electrical cord, Brown said.

He described Lester as an independent and opinionated woman who had befriended Reid at church.

On Oct. 12, 1996, Reid went to Lester's house on Radford Street to do some chores. She was killed sometime that afternoon. Reid, 58, has claimed he was drunk and blacked out at the time of the slaying and has no memory of it.

"I'm in favor of this sentence being carried out as soon as possible," Brown said.

But Jack Payden-Travers, director of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, called Reid "a poster child for why one might oppose the death penalty."

"Once again, it just proves that capital punishment means those without the capital get the punishment," Payden-Travers said.

Reid has been on death row since 1998, after he essentially entered guilty pleas to capital murder, attempted rape and attempted robbery in Reid's death on the advice of his attorneys.

Reid's sister, Ida Reid, argued that she and court personnel saw one of Reid's attorneys, Pete Theodore, sleeping during court proceedings in his case. Theodore has since been reprimanded by the Virginia State Bar in connection with the case.

"If that's not substandard legal counsel, what is?" Ida Reid asked. She described her brother as a brain-damaged alcoholic who doesn't know right from wrong and could not have planned to kill Lester.

"This is foolishness," Ida Reid said of the decisions of various courts to remove barriers to her brother's execution. "This is not what the death penalty is for. Virginia has run amok."