A white supremacist serial killer who targeted blacks and Jews has been executed in the United States.
Officials in Missouri administered a lethal injection Wednesday to Joseph Paul Franklin, 63, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his last bids for a stay of execution.
Franklin was the 35th inmate executed in the United States this year. He was put to death for killing a man outside a St. Louis synagogue in 1977, but also had been convicted of killing seven others in the late 1970s and 1980. He claimed responsibility for as many as 20 murders.
Franklin also acknowledged shooting civil rights leader Vernon Jordan, who recovered, and pornography publisher Larry Flynt, who was left paralyzed from the waist down. Flynt had sued to block Franklin's execution, claiming that the death penalty does not deter killings.
Officials in Missouri administered a lethal injection Wednesday to Joseph Paul Franklin, 63, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his last bids for a stay of execution.
Franklin was the 35th inmate executed in the United States this year. He was put to death for killing a man outside a St. Louis synagogue in 1977, but also had been convicted of killing seven others in the late 1970s and 1980. He claimed responsibility for as many as 20 murders.
Franklin also acknowledged shooting civil rights leader Vernon Jordan, who recovered, and pornography publisher Larry Flynt, who was left paralyzed from the waist down. Flynt had sued to block Franklin's execution, claiming that the death penalty does not deter killings.
