ATLANTA -- A judge on Monday halted the execution of the longest serving inmate on death row in Georgia, saying the state Board of Pardons and Paroles must provide Jack Alderman a second hearing.

"If the state is going to impose the extreme punishment of death ... due process of the law is never more important," Fulton County Superior Court Judge Melvin Westmoreland said.

Alderman, 57, has been on death row for 33 years. He'd been scheduled to die by lethal injection at 7 p.m. Tuesday for the 1974 slaying of his wife, Barbara, in Chatham County. Alderman and an accomplice beat her with a crescent wrench, then choked her before dumping her body in a creek near her family's home in Rincon. Prosecutors said the two wanted to collect $20,000 in life insurance money.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles quickly scheduled a hearing for Tuesday morning.

Westmoreland's decision Monday is the second time Alderman has been spared by a last-minute reprieve. Last October, the Georgia Supreme Court issued a stay on the eve of his scheduled execution to allow the U.S. Supreme Court to sort out constitutional questions surrounding the use of lethal injection.

Before that stay, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles held a hearing where Alderman's lawyers challenged the state's lethal injection protocol but bypassed the more traditional plea for clemency. In its decision, the board said although Alderman's lawyers had not sought clemency they considered -- and rejected -- it after reviewing written statements on Alderman's behalf.

On Monday, Alderman's lawyer, James Ringer, said that was not enough to provide a "meaningful" review. He said numerous witnesses are prepared to speak on Alderman's behalf and should be allowed to make their case in person to the board.

"We want the opportunity to speak and be heard," Ringer said.

But Senior Assistant Attorney General Joseph Drolet said the state had lived up to its obligation under the law with last year's hearing.

"There is nothing in the Georgia constitution ... that requires us to go beyond that," Drolet said.

Westmoreland said the parole board's hearing was now nearly a year old and expressed concern that Alderman's supporters had not been allowed to speak to the board in person, as they have in other cases.

Alderman's lawyers say he's been a model prisoner in more than three decades on death row. They also note that his accomplice, John Arthur Brown, was paroled while their client awaits execution.

But Barbara Alderman's sister, Rheta Braddy, called Alderman "a con man."

"It is time for Barbara to have some justice," Braddy said.

It's rare for the Georgia parole board to override a death sentence.

Since 1995, the state parole board has considered 24 death sentences and commuted only three. The most recent was in May, when the board commuted the sentence of convicted killer Samuel David Crowe to life without possibility of parole.