KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri prisons have been ordered to eliminate smoking after an asthmatic inmate serving a life sentence for two murders won a court judgment. 
 
 The Kansas City Star reports Missouri has been ordered to go smoke-free by April 1 because of the lawsuit Ecclesiastical Denzel Washington filed. 
 
 Missouri already bans smoking inside prison buildings, but it allowed it in designated areas outside. The evidence at trial showed that inmates are commonly written up for smoking in their cells. 
 
 State officials haven't announced details of their plan to eliminate smoking at 21 correctional facilities. 
 
 Attorney Phillip Zeeck, who helped represent Washington, said the ruling may save Missouri taxpayers money because of the cost of treating smoking-related illnesses for the state's more than 30,000 inmates. 
 
 "This is a win ultimately for the people who work and live in Missouri's correctional facilities," said Phillip Zeeck, who is with the Polsinelli law firm 
 
 Washington sued the state because he said he kept getting paired in a cell with a heavy smoker despite doctor's orders that he be held in a smoke-free area. The case has been working its way through the federal courts for a decade. 
 
 The 53-year-old Washington, who used to be known as Willie Simmons, was sentenced to death in 1989 for the murders of two St. Louis women. His sentence was later reduced to life in prison. 
 
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 Information from: The Kansas City Star, http://www.kcstar.com ||||| HANDOUT/REUTERS A combination photo shows Joseph Paul Franklin, who has been convicted of killing eight people from the late 1970s to 1980 in racially motivated attacks, in booking photos provided by the Missouri Department of Corrections taken in (L-R) 2005, 2007 and 2012. 
 
 ST. LOUIS — A federal judge in Missouri on Tuesday granted a stay of execution to white supremacist serial killer 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 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 first 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.” 
 
 It wasn’t immediately clear whether the state would appeal the ruling. Messages left with the state attorney general’s office were not returned. 
 
 If a federal appeals court or the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Laughrey’s ruling, the execution could go forward. Franklin’s attorney, Jennifer Herndon, said the execution warrant allows it to be carried out anytime Wednesday. 
 
 Herndon said Franklin, who has been diagnosed as mentally ill, didn’t seem to fully understand the stay. 
 
 “He was happy,” she said. “I’m not really convinced that he totally understands that he was going to die.” 
 
 Franklin, 63, was convicted of seven other murders, but the Missouri case was the only one resulting in a death sentence. Franklin also has admitted to shooting and wounding civil rights leader Vernon Jordan and Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, who has been paralyzed from the waist down since the attack in 1978. 
 
 Like other states, Missouri long had used a three-drug execution method. Drugmakers stopped selling those drugs to prisons and corrections departments, so in April 2012 Missouri announced a new one-drug execution protocol using propofol. The state planned to use propofol for an execution last month. 
 
 But Gov. Jay Nixon ordered the Missouri Department of Corrections to come up with a new drug after an outcry from the medical profession over planned use of the popular anesthetic in an execution. Most propofol is made in Europe, and the European Union had threaten to limit exports of it. 
 
 The corrections department turned to pentobarbital made through a compounding pharmacy. Few details have been made public about the compounding pharmacy, because state law provides privacy for parties associated with executions. 
 
 Anonymous/AP Joseph Paul Franklin is shown following his conviction on two counts of first degree murder in Salt Lake City in June 1981. 
 
 “Throughout this litigation, the details of the execution protocol have been illusive at best,” Laughrey wrote. “It is clear from the procedural history of this case that through no fault of his own, Franklin could not resolve his claims without a stay of his scheduled execution date.” 
 
 She added: “Franklin has been afforded no time to research the risk of pain associated with the Department’s new protocol, the quality of the pentobarbital provided, and the record of the source of the pentobarbital.” 
 
 Nixon spokesman Scott Holste had no immediate comment about the ruling. 
 
 Franklin was in his mid-20s when he began drifting across the country. He bombed a synagogue in Chattanooga, Tenn., in July 1977. No one was hurt, but soon, the killings began. 
 
 He arrived in the St. Louis area in October 1977 and picked out the Brith Sholom Kneseth Israel synagogue from the Yellow Pages. He fired five shots at the parking lot in Richmond Heights after a bar mitzvah on Oct. 8, 1977. One struck and killed Gerald Gordon, a 42-year-old father of three. 
 
 Franklin got away. His killing spree continued another three years. 
 
 Several of his victims were interracial couples. He also shot and killed, among others, two black children in Cincinnati, three female hitchhikers and a white 15-year-old prostitute, with whom he was angry because the girl had sex with black men. 
 
 He finally stumbled after killing two young black men in Salt Lake City in August 1980. He was arrested a month later in Kentucky, briefly escaped, and was captured for good a month after that in Florida. 
 
 Overall, Franklin was convicted of eight murders — two in Madison, Wis., two in Cincinnati, two in Salt Lake City, one in Chattanooga, Tenn., and the one in St. Louis County. Years later in federal prison, Franklin admitted to several crimes, including the St. Louis County killing. He was sentenced to death in 1997. 
 
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– Missouri prisons have been ordered to eliminate smoking after an asthmatic inmate serving a life sentence for two murders won a court judgment, per the AP. The Kansas City Star reports Missouri has been ordered to go smoke-free by April 1 because of the lawsuit Ecclesiastical Denzel Washington filed. Missouri already bans smoking inside prison buildings, but it allowed it in designated areas outside. The evidence at trial showed that inmates are commonly written up for smoking in their cells. Attorney Phillip Zeeck, who helped represent Washington, says the ruling may save Missouri taxpayers money because of the cost of treating smoking-related illnesses for the state's more than 30,000 inmates. Washington, 53, sued the state because he said he kept getting paired in a cell with a heavy smoker despite doctor's orders that he be held in a smoke-free area. The case has been working its way through the federal courts for a decade. Washington, who used to be known as Willie Simmons, was sentenced to death in 1989 for the murders of two St. Louis women. His sentence was later reduced to life in prison. "This is a win ultimately for the people who work and live in Missouri's correctional facilities," Zeeck notes. State officials haven't announced details of their plan to eliminate smoking at 21 correctional facilities.