A federal judge has halted the execution of an Alabama inmate just hours before he was to be put to death.
Chief U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins on Thursday stayed the execution of 56-year-old Jeffery Lynn Borden.
The reprieve came about four hours before Borden was set to be given a lethal injection at a southwest Alabama prison.
Watkins noted that the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals this month ordered additional proceedings in Borden's challenge to the humaneness of the state's lethal injection process.
The Alabama attorney general's office said it would not appeal the stay. The attorney general said there was "insufficient time to lift the stay" before the death warrant expired at midnight
Borden was convicted of killing his estranged wife, Cheryl Borden, and her father, Roland Harris, during a 1993 Christmas Eve gathering.
