Who would have thought it? Justice Scalia pulled the stop switch on the texecution of Kevin Lee Zimmerman yesterday due to a pending lawuit over whether the combination of lethal injection drugs used to kill inmates violates the cruel and unusual punishment ban of the 8th Amendment.

This is the second texecution stopped in the past two days over this issue. The drug at issue is pancuronium bromide, and we have written about the controversy several times, including here .

Pancuronium bromide paralyzes the skeletal muscles but does not affect the brain or nerves. A person injected with it remains conscious but cannot move or speak. The drug has been banned in Tennessee--for use by vetinarians performing euthanasia on animals. Yet Tennesse and 30 other states use it to kill inmates.

Scalia's order came with only 20 minutes to spare. Zimmerman was not happy.

"I'm disappointed," Zimmerman told Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman Michelle Lyons. "I was ready to go. The stay only means 18 more months of this crap."