USA - Missouri. Joseph Paul Franklin's execution, set for tomorrow, stayed twice.

Joseph Paul Franklin's execution, set for tomorrow, stayed twice. A federal judge today granted a stay of execution to Joseph Paul Franklin just hours before his scheduled death, citing concerns over the state's new execution method. U.S. District Court Judge Nanette Laughrey ruled that a lawsuit filed by Franklin and 20 other death row inmates challenging Missouri's execution protocol must be resolved before he is put to death. The state appealed Laughrey's ruling to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis on Tuesday night, though it wasn't clear how quickly that court would rule. A 2nd lower court federal judge, Judge Carol E. Jackson, weighing a separate defense appeal contesting Franklin's competency to be executed based on his mental illness, also granted a stay and said the issue needs "a meaningful review." Laughrey's 14-page ruling criticizes the timing of the state's changes to how it carries out capital punishment, specifically its plan to use for the 1st time a single drug, pentobarbital. It also takes issue with a plan to acquire the drug from a compounding pharmacy. Laughrey wrote that the Missouri Department of Corrections "has not provided any information about the certification, inspection history, infraction history, or other aspects of the compounding pharmacy or of the person compounding the drug." She noted that the execution protocol, which has changed repeatedly, "has been a frustratingly moving target." Franklin, who has been diagnosed as mentally ill, didn't seem to fully understand the stay, said Jennifer Herndon, his attorney. "He was happy," she said. "I'm not really convinced that he totally understands that he was going to die." Franklin, 63, was scheduled to die at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday for killing 42-year-old Gerald Gordon in a sniper attack outside a suburban St. Louis synagogue in 1977. It was one of as many as 20 killings committed by Franklin, who targeted blacks and Jews in a cross-country killing spree from 1977 to 1980.