TALLAHASSEE (AP) – A lawyer for a convicted murderer Wednesday told the Florida Supreme Court that his client should be spared from execution because new evidence points to a co-defendant as the killer.

The justices previously stayed the scheduled May 13 execution of John Richard Marek so a new trial judge could hear his appeal, which includes the argument he should get life in prison – the same sentence as co-defendant Raymond Wigley.

Marek, 47, was convicted of the June 1983 kidnapping, rape and strangulation of Adella Marie Simmons, whose body was found in a lifeguard stand on a Broward County beach.

Wigley, who was killed in prison by another inmate in 2000, had driven from Texas to Florida with Marek. They picked up the victim, a 45-year-old administrator at Barry University, on Florida’s Turnpike where her car had broken down.

Each claimed the other had killed the woman. Both were separately convicted of first-degree murder but received different sentences.

Marek’s appeal is based on new testimony from six witnesses who had been in prison with Wigley.

They said Wigley had confessed in conversations they either had with him or overheard. One witness said Wigley told him he strangled Simmons so she couldn’t identify him after he had raped her.