Stay lifted in Gray case, but . . .

According to this report in The Fayetteville Observer, a federal district judge has lifted the stay barring the execution of Ronald Gray, clearing the path for his execution unless the military courts intervene. The last military execution in the United States took place in 1961.

Postscript. A reader cautions:

The court's order made clear that the district judge contemplates that the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals or the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces will now issue a stay and leaves the door open to doing so himself if they don't; there's no execution in the cards anytime soon. 

The linked Observer article also gets the principal basis for appeal wrong -- the main issue in Gray is a Wiggins-type ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim for failure to develop powerful mitigating evidence that isn't too dissimilar to that in Wiggins itself.