The federal appeals court said the prosecution failed to disclose that a key trial witness was a paid informant.

A Texas appeals court on Tuesday halted the execution of a man who has spent more than 30 years on death row and had been set to die by lethal injection this week over the killings of six girls and young women found buried in the desert near El Paso.

David Wood, 67, was sentenced to death in 1992 for the killing of six woman and girls in El Paso, Texas. He has spent nearly 33 years on death row for the crimes.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals did not clarify why it halted the execution of David Wood in its order granting the stay.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has blocked the execution of convicted El Paso 'Desert Killer' David Leonard Wood, amid lack of DNA evidence.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted an indefinite stay of execution to David Leonard Wood, convicted of six murders in 1987, just days before his lethal injection date.

Brittany Marlowe Holberg was convicted in 1998 of robbing and murdering an 80-year-old man in his Amarillo home. The appeals court said critical evidence was withheld.

David Leonard Wood, who has been on death row for more than 32 years, was scheduled to be executed Thursday in the deaths of six girls and young women found buried in shallow graves in Northeast El Paso.

Thirty-seven years to the day, the state of Texas is set to execute Wood for the killing of six of those victims, whose bodies were found strangled and raped in a Northeast El Paso desert. Wood is scheduled to be executed after 5 p.m. Thursday, March 13, at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Huntsville Unit prison.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday delayed the plans of the state to executed its longest-held death row inmate.