Kimberly McCarthy, the Dallas woman convicted and sent to death row for the 1997 stabbing of her neighbor, won a reprieve from the death chamber on Tuesday, merely hours before she was scheduled to be the first woman executed in the U.S. since 2010.
State District Larry Mitchell rescheduled McCarthy's punishment for April 3 so her lawyers would be given ample time to further pursue an appeal whether the predominately white jury improperly selected her to death row on the matter of race.
McCarthy, 51, was convicted of the 1997 stabbing and beating of her 71-year-old neighbor Dorothy Booth. She also robbed her victim.
"I'm happy right now over that. There's still work to be done on my case," McCarthy reportedly told the prison agency spokesman John Hunt.
McCarthy would have been the 13th woman executed in the U.S. and the fourth in Texas, the largest death penalty state, since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976.
Booth's DNA was found on a 10-inch butcher knife recovered from McCarthy's home. McCarthy was arrested after police found her name on a pawn shop receipt for the ring.
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