AUSTIN (Reuters) - A Texas judge postponed until April the execution of Kimberly McCarthy, who was scheduled to die by lethal injection later on Tuesday, to give lawyers more time to present evidence of racial discrimination in selection of the jury which convicted her.

McCarthy, who is African-American, would have been the first woman executed in the United States in more than two years.

Dallas County District Court Judge Larry Mitchell postponed the execution until April 3, according to a copy of the order.

McCarthy was convicted of murdering her elderly neighbor in 1998 but the conviction was overturned on appeal. She was convicted again in 2002 and sentenced to death.

Her lawyers argued that only one of the 13 jurors selected in her trial was non-white, in a county which has a population 22.5 percent black.

(Reporting by Greg McCune; Additional reporting by Corrie MacLaggan; Editing by Paul Thomasch)