WASHINGTON, 11 DIC -Una ventina di minuti prima che Kevin Lee Zimmerman fosse messo a morte con un'iniezione letale nel carcere di Huntsville, nel Texas, la Corte Suprema degli Stati Uniti ha bloccato l'esecuzione.

Ma Zimmerman se n'e' lamentato e s'e' detto ''indispettito'' perche' -ha spiegato- ''ero pronto ad andarmene. La sospensione significa soltanto altri 18 mesi di questo strazio''.

Condannato a morte per avere rapinato e ucciso, nel 1987, un lavoratore dei campi di petrolio del Texas, accoltellato 31 volte, Zimmerman e' uno dei detenuti che hanno presentato un ricorso federale contro la formula dell'iniezione letale, che, nell'attuale composizione, paralizzerebbe i muscoli e impedirebbe di manifestare il dolore, senza pero' eliminarlo.

Anche martedi', la Corte Suprema statunitense aveva sospeso, in analoghe circostanze, l'esecuzione di un altro condannato a morte del carcere di Huntsville, che pure contesta l'iniezione letale.

GP

TEXAS: Second death row inmate in as many days spared

For the 2nd time in as many days, a Texas death row inmate avoided the death chamber.

Kevin Lee Zimmerman, from Lafayette Parish, was sentenced to death for a robbery-slaying in Beaumont 16 years ago. But Zimmerman received a reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court 20 minutes before he could have been put to death Wednesday evening.

Eighteen hours earlier, Billy Frank Vickers was spared from lethal injection as his death warrant expired while a federal appeals court left unresolved a lawsuit that challenged use of one of the chemicals employed in executions.

Both inmates had been plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed on their behalf.

Vickers had been hoping for the reprieve.

Zimmerman was not.

"I'm disappointed," Zimmerman told Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman Michelle Lyons after he was told he would continue to live. "I was ready to go."

In a brief order, Justice Antonin Scalia stopped Zimmerman's punishment pending an additional order from him or the court. A couple hours earlier, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had rejected the suit that sought a halt to the use of pancuronium bromide - a drug that paralyzes muscles and is one of the 3 chemicals used in the procedure.

According to attorneys for Vickers and Zimmerman, the drug contributed to pain that amounted to an unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment for the inmate. The legal action echoed a Tennessee death row inmate's suit, now on appeal, that cites an American Veterinary Medical Association condemnation of the drug.

The lethal cocktail of pancuronium bromide; sodium thiopental, a barbiturate; and potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest, has been used in Texas since the state became the 1st in the nation in 1982 to adopt lethal injection as its execution method.

"I'm obviously pleased," said Jim Marcus, executive director of the Texas Defenders Service, a legal group that represents death row inmates. "It's an important case and it deserves consideration.

"What this case boiled down to is whether death-sentenced inmates will have access to federal courts to raise civil rights violations."

Marcus said while the court order did not specify why the execution was delayed, he can only assume the court wants more time to consider his lawsuit, which asks for inmate access to the courts to raise such civil rights challenges.

"The court has that question under consideration in another case," Marcus said. "We sought a stay pending the outcome of that case."

Zimmerman, 42, was condemned for the 1987 fatal stabbing and robbery of Leslie Hooks Jr., 33, a Louisiana oilfield worker staying at a Beaumont motel. Hooks had been stabbed 31 times.

In 1992, Zimmerman and 2 other inmates tried to escape from death row by sawing their way through a recreation yard fence. The break was thwarted when a guard opened fire on them.

Vickers, 58, became the 1st condemned Texas inmate to have a death warrant expire since lethal injection became the method of capital punishment in Texas. Previously, either the inmate was executed, as 313 have been, or a court or the governor halted the punishment.

Vickers had been scheduled to die for fatally shooting a North Texas grocery store owner during a botched robbery attempt almost 11 years ago.

24 inmates were taken this year to the Texas death chamber, the nation's busiest. Over the past decade, that's about average for the nation's most active death penalty state.