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.

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.

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

A federal appeals court has tossed an Amarillo woman’s death sentence after it found that local prosecutors had failed to reveal that their primary trial witness was a paid informant.

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

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.

Texas Court of Criminal Appeals blocked the execution of convicted El Paso 'Desert Killer' David Leonard Wood, court records show.