MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press Writer

LIVINGSTON, Texas (AP) - Convicted serial killer David Leonard Wood, condemned for the slayings of six women found buried in the desert near El Paso more than two decades ago, won a reprieve Wednesday about 24 hours before he was set to be executed.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted the lethal injection scheduled for Thursday, saying the El Paso man was entitled to a hearing to pursue claims he is mentally impaired and ineligible for execution under U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

Three of the court's nine judges would have dismissed Wood's appeal, including Presiding Judge Sharon Keller. She is on trial in San Antonio, accused of improperly refusing to allow a last-minute appeal in another death penalty case two years ago.

Wood, 52, a repeat convicted sex offender, insisted he was innocent of the murders that terrorized El Paso in 1987. He would have been the 17th inmate put to death this year in the nation's busiest capital punishment state.

The ruling from Texas' highest criminal appeals court sends the case back to the trial court for a hearing. Prosecutors had opposed the appeal from attorneys for Wood, made Tuesday.

At Wood's trial in 1992, a psychiatrist testified Wood had an IQ of 68, two points below the threshold for considering someone mentally impaired.

A water utility worker digging in the desert northeast of El Paso in September 1987 made the first grisly discovery - a hand sticking out of the ground. The decomposed remains belonged to one of several missing women and girls.

The same day, police found a second body buried nearby. Over the next weeks they would find three more bodies in shallow graves within a 1½-mile area. A sixth victim was found five months later. All the dead women were between the ages of 14 and 23.

El Paso authorities looking for a serial killer focused on Wood after a prostitute came forward, telling police she had been raped in the same desert area where the bodies were turning up. She survived after being left naked and tied to a tree when her assailant fled because he heard voices nearby.

Wood received 50 years in prison for her attack. It was at least his third conviction.

When two of Wood's cellmates said the El Paso man told them he was responsible for the desert killings, Wood was indicted for capital murder three years after the first body was found.

"These were two jailhouse-snitching rats," Wood, proclaiming his innocence, told The Associated Press recently from a tiny visiting cage outside death row.

The U.S. Supreme Court last year refused to review his case after lower federal courts rejected an appeal of his conviction and sentence.

Wood, in 1992, was the first defendant to be prosecuted under a new serial killer provision in the Texas capital murder law. Under the provision, he became eligible for the death penalty if he was convicted of the slaying of the first victim listed in the indictment and at least one of the other victims.

The former construction worker was prosecuted for the slayings of Rosa Casio and Ivy Williams, both 23; Karen Baker, 21; Angelica Frausto, 17; Desiree Wheatley, 15; and Dawn Smith, 14. Casio, whose body was the first to be discovered, was from Addison, a Dallas suburb. All the others were from El Paso.

Three other women reported missing at the same time have not been found.

Wood called himself a "scapegoat" so investigators could say they solved the disappearances.

Besides testimony from his cellmates, prosecutors showed jurors orange fibers retrieved from a vacuum cleaner belonging to Wood. The same fibers were found on clothing in the shallow grave of Wheatley and came from a blanket Wood kept in his pickup truck.

Prosecutors said witnesses also were able to place Wood with the victims before they disappeared.

The women began disappearing from El Paso in February 1987, a month after Wood was paroled from a 20-year sentence for raping two teenagers. He had served seven years. In 1980, he served 3½ years of a five-year term for indecency with a child.

At least nine other Texas prisoners have execution dates in the coming months. Scheduled next is Stephen Moody, 52, set for lethal injection Sept. 16 for the fatal shooting of Joseph Hall, 28, of Houston, during a home robbery in 1991.