He fell one vote short of having his execution date put off.
But the execution was put off for at least six months by the decision of the judge, Orlando Luis Garcia of the Federal District Court in San Antonio, who suggested that he would hold the hearing next February or March.
(More recently, Ali G asked Richard Thornburgh, the former Attorney General, if a death-row inmate could put off execution indefinitely by requesting an all-you-can-eat buffet).
International rights groups have pleaded with authorities to put off the execution, but Belarus's president refused to pardon the men.
With responses then certain from defense lawyers, the effect of the order was to put off the execution for months, lawyers said.
Defense lawyers cited these letters as reasons to put off the execution until DNA tests could be conducted on crime scene evidence, including a rape kit, a request that Mr. Manning had made unsuccessfully several times before.
But there are serious questions about the case, so much so that international rights organizations and Western governments have pleaded with the Belarus authorities to put off the execution.
They argued, unsuccessfully, that Mr Echegaray should be spared, because all the delays (for which his lawyers were partly responsible) meant that the time limit had been exceeded.The Supreme Court has now put off the execution of Mr Echegaray and all other condemned prisoners until June 15th.
Indonesia's authorities, fearing an Islamist backlash and further bombings, repeatedly put off the executions.
Lawyers for both Buck and Woods are engaged in frenzied last-minute lobbying to Perry and to the courts to try to put off the executions.
The stay of execution issued by Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put off what would have been the 15th execution in the United States this year and the second in Alabama.
