State prosecutors withheld evidence favorable to Brittany Marlow Holberg during her 1998 murder trial that resulted in her being sentenced to death, a federal appellate court panel ruled Friday.

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.

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

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.

The order came just over 48 hours before David Leonard Wood was set to be executed by lethal injection on Thursday.

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

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.

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.

Here are some key moments in the serial killer's timeline: Jan. 15 – David Leonard Wood is paroled after serving seven years of two concurrent 20-year sentences for raping a 19-year-old and a 13-year-old in 1980. Feb. 14 – Marjorie Knox, 14, of the 400 block of Byrum in Chaparral, N.M., disappears. She remains missing.