A Texas appeals court has 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.

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

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.