TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has let stand the Kansas death sentence of a man convicted of killing a college student more than two decades ago.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt says the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review 61-year-old Gary Kleypas’ case.

Kleypas was the first person condemned in Kansas after it reinstated the death penalty in 1994. Kansas hasn’t executed anyone in more than 50 years.

Kleypas’ case now returns to Kansas courts for more appeals related to his conviction of the 1996 rape and stabbing death of 20-year-old Pittsburg State University student Carrie Williams.

Kansas’ Supreme Court overturned Kleypas’ death sentence in 2001, but a jury restored it in 2008.

At the time of Williams’ death, Kleypas was on parole from a 1977 Missouri murder conviction.