Convicted murderer Jack Alderman will get another opportunity for clemency.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Melvin Westmoreland issued a stay of execution Monday morning until Alderman has an in-person appeal before the state Board of Pardons and Paroles.

“Petitioner has not received the meaningful hearing with the Board required by law,” Westmoreland said in his order. “As such, Petitioner’s death sentence shall not be imposed by the Department of Corrections unless and until an appropriate appointment is set by the Board of Pardons and Paroles … and a decision is rendered by the Board after the requisite hearing.”

Alderman, who was convicted in 1975 for the Sept. 21, 1974, murder of his wife Barbara Jean Alderman, is scheduled for execution on Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.

Barbara Jean Alderman is survived by family members living in Effingham County.

Alderman’s request for an appointment to present his case before the parole board last week had been denied. However, in response to Westmoreland’s ruling, the parole board has scheduled a clemency hearing for 9 a.m. Tuesday.

Georgia’s constitution gives the parole board the power of executive clemency, including the power to commute sentences and suspend execution until the Board has heard the application for relief.

Until the parole board makes a final decision, the Department of Corrections is moving forward.

“We’re in the middle of rehearsal for the execution as we speak,” DOC spokesman Paul Czachowski said Monday afternoon. 

“We’re proceeding as if the execution is still going to happen tomorrow at 7 p.m.”

Alderman received a temporary stay of execution last October while awaiting the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on whether or not lethal injections are constitutional.  On April 16, the high court ruled that lethal injections were not considered a “cruel and unusual punishment.”

According to trial transcripts, two days prior to the murder Alderman asked his neighbor and former colleague John Arthur Brown to kill his wife. On the evening of Sept. 21, 1974, in the couple’s Garden City apartment, Alderman instructed Brown to hit his wife over the head with a wrench.

By the next morning, police had found Alderman at his apartment with another woman. After Brown testified on behalf of prosecution, Alderman was convicted of murder in June 1975. Brown was convicted of murder that November in Chatham County Superior Court and sentenced to death.