The execution of a Georgia man scheduled for Wednesday has been suspended as the State Board of Pardons and Paroles considers a clemency application. 

Stacey Humphreys, 52, would have been the state's first execution in 2025.

Humphreys had been sentenced to death for the 2003 killings of 33-year-old Cyndi Williams and 21-year-old Lori Brown, who were fatally shot at the real estate office where they worked.

On Monday, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles issued an order suspending the execution after receiving a clemency petition.

The petition, delivered by the group Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, included more than 1,400 signatures asking the board to commute Humphreys' sentence.

The group said the jury in Humphreys' case initially deadlocked 11-1 in favor of life without parole, which under Georgia law should have resulted in a life sentence. Instead, the court ordered jurors to continue deliberating until a death sentence was reached. The group also claims the lone juror who pushed for the death penalty was unqualified and biased, and that several jurors have since asked the parole board to honor what they say was the jury's true verdict.

A federal judge had declined to block the execution last week, ruling that Humphreys failed to show his constitutional rights would be violated by carrying out the execution.

The judge's order set Humphreys' execution to happen between noon on Wednesday and noon on Dec. 24. It is not clear if it will be rescheduled during that time.

The Georgia Department of Corrections said Humphreys would have been the 55th person executed in Georgia by lethal injection since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.