Arguing their client has been waiting “24 years, 2 months and 19 days for justice,” defense attorneys for an accused killer are demanding that prosecutors bring him to trial soon or release him from prison.

Ernest Matthew Riddle initially was convicted and sentenced to death for the Aug. 8, 1985 murder of an elderly grandmother, Abbie Sue Mullinax, inside her home at 205 Concord Ave. in Gaffney.

His sentence was twice overturned and reinstated following subsequent appeals. In 2006, however, the state Supreme Court overturned Riddle’s conviction altogether, setting the stage for a retrial.

Riddle’s defense attorneys, in new legal filings last week, argued that it’s been more than 1,230 days since the state Supreme Court unanimously overturned the conviction and their client has yet to get his day in court.

“Mr. Riddle respectfully moves this Court to do what the state refuses to do: Please set Mr. Riddle’s case for a trial or dismiss all of the charges against him,” the defense attorneys said in one petition. “By any measure of time applied to this case, Mr. Riddle’s constitutional rights have been violated and they continue to be violated with each additional day.”

The attorneys are seeking Riddle’s case be tried during the next available term of court.

In a separate petition, the attorneys are asking the court to reconsider bond for Riddle, arguing that it’s been more than 1,056 days since his last request for bond was rejected and a retrial still has not been held.

They also are arguing that the state’s “fragile and ill-founded” case against Riddle, who maintains his innocence, “has all but collapsed.”

Riddle and his brother, Jason, were both accused of breaking into the grandmother’s home for a burglary. When Mullinax awoke to investigate a noise, and screamed when she saw intruders, authorities claim Ernest Riddle killed her with a knife he found in her kitchen.

Jason Riddle initially testified against his brother but reportedly refuses to do so again. Inconsistencies in Jason’s testimony and the way they were addressed, or not at all, by prosecutors in the 1980s accounted for many of the reasons why Ernest Riddle’s conviction was overturned.

Recent legal wrangling in the nearly 25-year-old case has centered on blood evidence collected from the doormat of a Birch Street home not far from the murder scene. Three people not including Ernest Riddle allegedly were knocking to get inside the Birch Street home about an hour after Mullinax was killed and bloodhounds allegedly led investigators from the murder scene to Birch Street after the murder.

Riddle’s defense attorneys argued that scientific tests showed the blood evidence found on the doormat contained DNA from a man and a woman and that Riddle’s blood had been excluded by scientific tests. Arguing that a new round of tests could show the “real” killer, they subsequently sought court approval to test a sample of Mullinax’s DNA against the doormat evidence. The court granted permission earlier this year.

However, Riddle’s defense attorneys are now contending that such tests are impossible because prosecutors allegedly allowed SLED to use up all of the remaining sample of Mullinax’s DNA during their own, unilateral, testing.

Attorneys from the 7th Circuit Solicitors Office, none of whom were involved in the original prosecution more than 20 years ago, have argued the DNA testing would prove nothing.

“There is no DNA result that exonerates Ernest Riddle,” a prosecutor wrote in a filing last year.

Circuit Judge Cordell Maddox Jr. is presiding over the case.