1970s Florida Killer [PHOTO/VIDEO] facing execution, The U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed a stay of execution imposed by a lower court blocking the scheduled execution of a South Florida mass killer.
Florida officials immediately asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the stay.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision came during a flurry of court rulings over claims that 64-year-old John Errol Ferguson suffers from mental illness so severe he cannot be executed.
Ferguson, a paranoid schizophrenic with delusions he's the "prince of God," had faced a planned lethal injection at 6 p.m. Tuesday in Florida's death chamber.
Ferguson was convicted in the fatal, execution-style shootings of six bound and blindfolded people in South Florida in 1977, and of killing a teenage couple in 1978.
Previous judges have ruled that he is legally competent to be executed.
