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STARKE, Fla. (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to lift a stay imposed by a lower court blocking the scheduled execution of a South Florida mass killer.

The ruling late Tuesday means the execution of 64-year-old John Errol Ferguson is off until at least early November. He had faced a planned lethal injection earlier Tuesday.

A federal appeals court ruled it must consider whether Ferguson is too mentally ill to face the death penalty. Ferguson is a paranoid schizophrenic who has spent 34 years on death row.

Ferguson was convicted in the fatal, execution-style shootings of six bound and blindfolded people in South Florida in 1977, and of killing a teenage couple in 1978.