JACKSON (AP) — Mississippi could execute men on three consecutive days in June.

Attorney General Jim Hood’s office is asking the state Supreme Court to set execution dates for three men, one each on June 12, 13 and 14.

Hood’s office made the request Monday after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear appeals of Henry Curtis Jackson Jr., Gary Carl Simmons Jr. and Jan Michael Brawner.

State law says that the state Supreme Court has to set an execution date within 30 days after appeals are exhausted. June 14 would be the 30th day after Monday’s denial, if no other court intervenes.

Gov. Phil Bryant would also have the option to pardon the men or commute their sentences, although Bryant has vowed not to use the pardon power after former Gov. Haley Barbour caused an uproar by pardoning a large number of people at the end of his term.

Lawyers for Brawner are already seeking another appeal before the state Supreme Court, saying that his lawyers failed to present evidence showing mitigating factors against a death sentence, including a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Tara Booth, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Department of Corrections, said that the state has never executed three people in one week, and said she didn’t think the attorney general had ever requested three executions in one week.

Booth said the department was capable of conducting three consecutive executions at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.

In March, Mississippi executed two men in one week. Larry Matthew Puckett was put to death on March 20 and William Mitchell was put to death on March 22.

In May 2010, the state executed men on two consecutive days.

Mississippi has 53 people on death row, 51 men and two women. The pace of executions is picking up in Mississippi. If all three executions go forward, the state will have executed 21 people since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Of those, 11 will have been executed since 2010.

Jim Craig, a veteran defender of Mississippi death row inmates, said case law gives the state Supreme Court “wide discretion” in setting execution dates. He said he hopes the justices stretch out the dates.

“I hope our Court does not set three executions within the same week, or for that matter two weeks,” Craig wrote in an email. “It would be unfair to the survivors of the victims, the family members of the prisoners, and the prisoners themselves to have their pain and loss minimized by an ‘assembly line’ series of executions. It would also unfairly compress the time for Gov. Bryant to consider clemency in each case.”

In briefs filed with the state Supreme Court, the attorney general’s office said Jackson should be executed first because his crime is the oldest, followed on June 13 by Simmons and lastly by Brawner on June 14 because his crime is the most recent.

Jackson, 47, was convicted of stabbing two nieces and two nephews, ranging in age from 2 years to 5 years, at his mother’s home near Greenwood in 1990. He also was convicted of stabbing his adult sister and another niece, who both survived. Prosecutors said Jackson, who was 26 at the time, planned to steal his mother’s safe and kill the victims when he went to the house that day asking for a cigarette and money. He was convicted and sentenced to death on four counts of capital murder after a trial in September 1991. The trial was held in Copiah County after Jackson’s defense attorney requested a change of venue.

In 1998, the state Supreme Court ordered Leflore County to hire an appellate lawyer on Jackson’s behalf. That precedent, and other counties ordered to incur such expense afterward, aided the creation of a statewide system of appeal lawyers

Simmons, 49, was convicted for shooting and dismembering Jeffrey Wolfe. Wolfe was killed in August 1996 after he came to Simmons’ Pascagoula home to collect on a drug debt, according to court records. Timothy Milano, Simmons’ co-defendant and the person authorities said shot Wolfe, was convicted on the same charges and sentenced to life in prison.

Simmons worked as a grocery store butcher when he and Milano were charged with killing Wolfe. Police said the pair kidnapped Wolfe and his female friend and later assaulted the woman and locked her in a box. Police found parts of Wolfe’s dismembered body at Simmons’ house, in the yard and at a nearby bayou.

Brawner, 34, was convicted of the 2001 killings of his 3-year-old daughter, ex-wife and former father-in-law and mother-in-law in Sarah, a rural Tate County community west of Senatobia.

Brawner went to the Craft home after learning that his former wife planned to stop him from seeing their child, trial testimony showed. He also had no money and contemplated robbing his former in-laws, who had loaned him money in the past, according to testimony. Brawner admitted to the killings at trial and told a prosecutor that he deserved death.