SOMERS, Conn. (AP) – An hour before serial killer Michael Ross was scheduled to be executed this morning, state officials delayed the lethal injection to address a possible conflict of interest with his attorney.

Lawyer T.R. Paulding, hired by Ross last year to help expedite his execution, said Ross did not request the postponement. The execution was rescheduled for 9 p.m. Monday, Correction Commissioner Theresa Lantz said.

“The request made by Mr. Paulding today is appropriate and we have no choice but to honor it,” Chief State’s Attorney Christopher Morano said.

Officials would not discuss the suspected conflict, but the decision came just hours after a federal judge scolded Paulding for helping Ross end his life.

“I see this happening and I can’t live with it myself, which is why I’m on the phone right now,” U.S. District Judge Robert Chatigny said Friday afternoon in a telephone conference with Paulding, according to court records.

“What you are doing is terribly, terribly wrong,” he said.

Paulding would not say what he needed to consider this weekend.

“I feel that it is imperative I take the appropriate steps,” Paulding said.

“I will be taking those steps with all due diligence in the next two days,” he said.

Ross, 45, is on death row for murdering four women in eastern Connecticut in the 1980s, but he has admitted killing eight women in Connecticut and New York.

Though he has said he does not want to die, he said he stopped appealing his sentence to spare his victims’ families additional anguish.

The delay of the execution followed a full day of legal wrangling.

Officials had believed the U.S. Supreme Court cleared away the last legal hurdle Friday night.

The court-authorized death warrant expires at 11:59 p.m. Monday, Lantz said.

If Ross is not executed by then, prosecutors will have to go back before a judge and get a new authorization.

Protesters who gathered to oppose the execution reacted with surprise and confusion early this morning as word spread that Ross would not be executed.

“We’re stunned and we insist this is a continuing example of a process that does not work,” said Robert Nave, head of the Connecticut Coalition Against the Death Penalty.