By James Nye, Ryan Gorman and Associated Press Reporter PUBLISHED: 23:15 EST, 19 November 2013 | UPDATED: 03:58 EST, 20 November 2013 Serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin was granted a stay of execution Tuesday only hours before he was set to die of lethal injection in a Missouri jail. Mr Franklin, 63, and his legal team were able to successfully argue the state was at risk of violating the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment by using pentobarbital as an execution drug. The drug is slowly starting to replace previously used lethal injection cocktails because drug manufacturers will no longer provide them to US prisons.
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Joseph Paul Franklin admitted to killing 22 people across multiple states between 1977 and 1980
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He was on Missouri death row for the 1977 killing of a Jewish man outside a St. Louis synagogue
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His lawyers argued pentobarbital was inhumane
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Mr Franklin also shot Hustler publisher Larry Flynt in 1978 in Georgia
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