White Supremacist Executed in Missouri
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 20, 2013
BONNE TERRE, Mo. — The State of Missouri on Wednesday morning put to death a white supremacist serial killer, Joseph Paul Franklin, in the state’s first execution in nearly three years.
Mr. Franklin, 63, targeted blacks and Jews in a cross-country killing spree from 1977 to 1980. He was executed at the state prison in Bonne Terre for killing Gerald Gordon in a sniper shooting outside a suburban St. Louis synagogue in 1977.
Mr. Franklin was convicted of seven other murders across the country and claimed responsibility for up to 20. The Missouri case was the only one that brought a death sentence.
The execution came after the United States Supreme Court denied a petition seeking a stay. It was the state’s first using a single drug, pentobarbital.
Like other states, Missouri had long used a three-drug execution method. Drugmakers stopped selling those drugs to prisons and corrections departments, so in April 2012 Missouri announced a one-drug execution protocol using propofol, an anaesthetic. 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 the European Union threatened to limit exports of propofol if the United States used it in an execution, prompting an outcry among American medical professionals.
Missouri then joined other states in selecting pentobarbital as the drug of choice for executions. Texas switched to a lethal, single dose of the sedative in 2012. South Dakota has carried out two executions using the drug. Georgia has said it is also taking that route.
In allowing the execution to proceed, appeals courts overturned a decision late Tuesday by Judge Nanette Laughrey of Federal District Court in Missouri, who held that the state 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.” Judge Laughrey said the execution protocol, which has changed repeatedly, “has been a frustratingly moving target.”
In addition to the murders, Mr. Franklin admitted to shooting and wounding the civil rights leader Vernon Jordan and the publisher of Hustler magazine, Larry Flynt, who has been paralyzed from the waist down since he was attacked in 1978.
In October 1977, Mr. Franklin arrived in the St. Louis area 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. One struck and killed Mr. Gordon, a 42-year-old father of three.
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