Death row inmate Gregory Hunt's sobering six-word admission right before his execution

In a matter of hours, death row inmate Gregory Hunt will take his final breath.

Hunt was convicted of the brutal killing of Karen Lane in 1988. According to court records, the pair had only been dating for around a month when Hunt broke into 32-year-old Lane's apartment - which she shared with his cousin - before sexually assaulting her, according to prosecutors.

He then murdered her, with an autopsy later revealing that she'd died from blunt force trauma after sustaining as many as 60 injuries, which included 20 to her head, NBC News reports.

Hunt, 65, was subsequently convicted on three counts of capital murder by a jury in 1990, and he's remained on death row ever since.

It was announced earlier this year, almost 37 years after Lane's death, that he'd be put to death on Tuesday (10 June) via nitrogen gas - the sixth execution of its kind in the state.

It took almost four decades for Hunt to receive his execution date (Getty Stock Image)

Before this, Hunt himself issued a request for a stay of execution, where he claimed prosecutors made false statements pertaining to sexual abuse, which ABC News says was what elevated the crime to a death penalty offence.

He said that prosecutors had claimed a broom with cervical mucus on it was near Hunt's body; however, the victim didn't have a cervix because of a hysterectomy. The judge dismissed this claim as 'meritless', and even if that were the case, it didn't throw the conviction into doubt.

With his execution set to take place today, he gave a telephone interview, as per WHMB, where he first claimed that he's not 'your typical death row inmate', before issuing a chilling six-word statement.

"I don't have no pity party," he said before elaborating: "You know, I'm just battling until I get a break or they snuff my light out."

Last month, Hunt filed an appeal where he admitted to having murdered Lane during a burglary, the Alabama Reflector reports.

Hunt claimed never to have sexually assaulted his victim (Alabama Department of Corrections)

"I can't explain what happened," he admitted at the time. "All I can say is that she didn't deserve what happened to her."

Hunt continued, according to ABC: "You have your come-to-Jesus moment. Of course, after the fact, you can't believe what has happened.

"You can't believe you were part of it and did it."

During the same appeal, however, he denied ever sexually assaulting his victim, claiming the physician who performed Lane's autopsy had offered a false and misleading testimony to secure his death sentence.

In the weeks that followed, however, the Alabama Attorney General's Office rejected Hunt's appeal and barred him from making subsequent claims of innocence.

"The pathologist did not testify falsely," a spokesperson for the office explained in the official filing.

"Rather, the prosecutor drew an inference from the evidence that, while supported, may have been inaccurate."