STARKE, Fla. --
The scheduled execution of a Florida man convicted of shooting a police officer to death during a traffic stop in 1978 is being delayed while prison officials await an order from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Sixty-one-year-old Manuel Valle was set to die at 4 p.m. Wednesday at the Florida State Prison. The governor's office says that time passed with prison authorities awaiting word from the court.
Valle shot officer Louis Pena to death in 1978, records show.
Southern prisons have seen a spate of executions in recent days, beginning with the Sept/ 21 execution of Troy Davis in Georgia for a policeman's shooting and the Texas execution that day of a white supremacist for a black man's dragging death. Alabama also executed a man for a 1994 shooting death.
