JACKSON (AP) — A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked the execution of a Mississippi inmate who killed two men during a robbery spree in 1995. The man’s attorneys asked for the order, not arguing guilt or innocence, but that corrections officials prevented Edwin Hart Turner from getting medical tests that could prove he is mentally ill.

Turner, 38, had been scheduled to die by injection Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves in Jackson blocked the execution until Feb. 20. In the meantime, Turner’s lawyers can seek a longer stay.

James Craig with the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center argued during a hearing Friday that MDOC policy prohibited Turner from getting tests that could prove he’s mentally ill, a diagnosis they hope will help sway the U.S. Supreme Court to block the executions of Turner and others with mental illnesses. They also would like the tests to send to Gov. Phil Bryant as part of a clemency petition.

Craig said the MDOC policy, which dates to the 1990s, violates prisoners’ rights to have access to courts and other materials that can help them develop evidence.

Craig asked the court to block the execution while the judge weighs evidence about the corrections policy. The policy requires court orders for medical experts or others to visit and test inmates.

“Mr. Turner has never had a fair opportunity to present the evidence that he is the sort of seriously mentally ill prisoner who should not be executed in a humane criminal justice system,” Craig said Monday in a statement. “We are simply asking that we be allowed to have access to our client so that we can have him psychiatrically assessed so that the best information is available before any decision is made to proceed with the execution.”

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood has said Turner’s lawyers are bringing up old arguments that have been rejected by the courts before.

“We argue that his mental health claims have been fully addressed, and that this present action is nothing more than an attempt to re-litigate a claim that has been properly adjudicated at every turn,” Hood said in a statement.

Craig filed a separate petition last week with the U.S. Supreme Court that seeks to have the execution blocked.

That petition said Mississippi is one of 10 states that permit someone who suffered from serious mental illness at the time of the offense to be executed. Turner’s lawyers want the Court to prohibit the execution of mentally ill people the way it did inmates considered mentally retarded.

There’s little dispute that Turner killed the men then went home and had a meal of shrimp and cinnamon rolls before going to sleep.

Turner’s lawyers argue in the U.S. Supreme Court that he inherited a serious mental illness. His father is thought to have committed suicide by shooting a gun into a shed filled with dynamite and his grandmother and great-grandmother both spent time in the state mental hospital.

Turner’s face is severely disfigured from a self-inflicted gunshot wound from a suicide attempt when he was 18 in which he put a rifle in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Craig said in a telephone interview Monday that Turner had spent three months in the Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield after slitting his wrists in 1995, in another suicide attempt. He had been out about six weeks before the killings occurred.

Turner was convicted of killing the two men while robbing gas stations with his friend, Paul Murrell Stewart, in a spree that netted about $400. Stewart, who was 17 at the time, testified against Turner and was sentenced to life in prison.

Craig said Turner was diagnosed with depression that year and given the antidepressant medication Prozac. Craig believes Turner was misdiagnosed and that Prozac compounded his problems.

“If the folks at Whitfield knew then what we know now, I feel confident they wouldn’t have released him with 40 milligrams of Prozac,” Craig said.

According to court records, Stewart gave this account of the day of the killings: Turner and Stewart were drinking beer and smoking marijuana when they decided to rob a store Dec. 13, 1995. They picked Mims Turkey Village Truck Stop on U.S. Highway 82 in Carroll County, where 37-year-old Eddie Brooks of North Carrolton was working.

They walked inside with Turner carrying a 6mm rifle and Stewart holding a .243 caliber rifle. Stewart wore a mask. Turner had a towel wrapped around his face, the same towel he always wore in public to hide his disfigured face. “Turner” was written on his jacket.

Turner shot Brooks in the chest, according to Stewart. Turner and Stewart went behind the counter to take the money, but couldn’t get the cash register to open, not even when Turner shot it and beat it with his gun.

Turner became enraged and “placed the barrel of his gun inches from Eddie Brooks’ head and pulled the trigger,” the court records said.

The two men left the store empty handed and drove about four miles down the road to Mims One Stop, where Everett Curry, a 38-year-old prison guard from Greenwood, was pumping gas. Stewart went inside to rob the store, while Turner forced Curry to the ground at gunpoint.

“As Curry was pleading for his life, Turner shot him in the head,” the court records said.

Turner and Stewart went back to Turner’s house, where Turner cooked shrimp and cinnamon rolls. They ate and fell asleep. When they woke up, deputies were knocking on the door.

Turner said in a 1999 letter to the New Oxford Review that he became a Christian after going to prison.

“It wasn’t until I got to death row that I had a chance to read some Christian apologetics and get my thoughts to flow sequentially,” the letter said. “As a result, the absurdity of ‘the world’ became manifest to me, and I became a Christian. Curiously, it was on death row that I finally found a reason to live.”