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 Leonard Wood, the man sentenced to die for the 1987 deaths of six girls and young women whose bodies were buried in the Northeast El Paso desert, was scheduled to be executed on Thursday