Jury Grants Avowed Racist Killer’s Request: Death Penalty

CLAYTON, Mo. — An avowed racist murderer who threatened to kill again if allowed to live was granted his wish when a jury sentenced him to death for fatally shooting a man outside a synagogue 20 years ago.

Joseph Paul Franklin, already in prison for murdering an interracial couple and two black men, had said he is weary of a life behind bars and wants to die.

He nodded approvingly as Judge Robert L. Campbell read the sentence Thursday. Campbell affirmed the jury’s recommendation.

“I’d just like to thank the court for a fair trial,” said Franklin, who admitted shooting and paralyzing Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt in 1978 but was never tried in that case.

A defense lawyer objected to the death sentence, saying Franklin was a paranoid schizophrenic and should not have been allowed to represent himself at trial. But Franklin signed a waiver of appeal moments after the sentencing.

A month earlier he had asked a jury to sentence him to death, warning he would kill again if he were allowed to live.

Franklin was serving six life sentences when he admitted killing a Jewish man, Gerald Gordon, 42, as the victim was leaving a bar mitzvah in 1977. He told police he wanted to kill as many Jews as possible.

He was convicted of killing an interracial couple in Madison, Wis., in 1977, and of killing two black men in Salt Lake City in 1980.

Franklin was acquitted in 1982 of wounding civil rights leader Vernon Jordan in Fort Wayne, Ind., in 1980. Jordan was president of the National Urban League at the time. Franklin confessed to the crime a decade later but could not be retried because of the right against double jeopardy.

In the Flynt case, the prosecutor said the assault charge wasn’t worth pursuing, given the murder charges against him.