A stay of execution is a court order to temporarily suspend the execution of a court judgment or other court order. The word "execution" refers to the imposition of whatever judgment is being stayed and is similar to an injunction. A stay can be granted automatically by operation of law or by order of a court, either following a motion or by agreement of the parties. If a party appeals a decision, any judgment issued by the original court may be stayed until the appeal is resolved. Death penalty stays In cases that the death penalty has been imposed, a stay of execution is often sought to defer the execution of the convicted person. That may occur if new evidence is discovered to exonerate the convicted person or in attempts to have the sentence commuted to life imprisonment. In the United States, all death sentences are automatically stayed pending a direct review by an appeals court. If the death sentence is found to have been legally sound, the stay is lifted. One example of a stay of execution in the death penalty context was the James Autry case. Autry was already strapped down to the execution table in Texas on 4 October 1983 when the order came to stop the execution. He was executed a few months later, on 14 March 1984. U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey granted a stay of execution on 19 November 2013 in response to a motion by the lawyers of the convicted Joseph Paul Franklin that use of the drug phenobarbital in a lethal injection would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The following day, US Supreme Court upheld an appeal court's decision to lift the stay of execution. Franklin was put to death on 20 November 2013. Another case is the case of Kho Jabing in Singapore. Kho, who was a Malaysian detained on death row for the capital murder of Chinese national Cao Ruyin, received a death warrant which ordered that his execution was to be carried out on 6 November 2015. Through his lawyer, Kho managed to suspend his execution while pending a newly filed last-minute appeal against his sentence. Earlier on, in 2013, while he had spent three years on death row for killing Cao Ruyin during a robbery in 2008, the changes to the law had officially abolished the mandatory death penalty for murder committed with no intention to kill and