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 Joseph Paul Franklin, 63, is scheduled to die at 12:01 a.m.
Wednesday for killing 42-year-old Gerald Gordon in a sniper attack
outside a suburban St. Louis synagogue in 1977. It was one of as
many as 20 killings committed by Franklin, who targeted blacks and
Jews in a cross-country killing spree from 1977 to 1980. He was
convicted of seven other murders but the Missouri case was the only
one resulting in a death sentence.
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon on Monday refused to halt the execution,
denying Franklin's clemency request and calling his crime in
Missouri a "cowardly and calculated shooting."
The Missouri crime "was only one of many senseless acts of extreme
violence that Franklin, motivated by racial and religious
intolerance, committed against numerous victims across the country —
from Tennessee and Ohio to Utah and Wisconsin," Nixon said in a
statement.
Franklin's attorney, Jennifer Herndon, said she was disappointed by
the governor's decision and has spent the days leading up to the
execution asking various courts and Nixon to intervene. Clemency
from Nixon, a Democrat, seemed a long shot given his long history of
support for the death penalty. He was also attorney general in 1997
when Franklin was tried, convicted and sentenced in the St. Louis
County case.
However, Nixon did issue a stay last month, days before convicted
killer Allen Nicklasson was scheduled to die. That decision was in
response to concerns raised about Missouri's plan to use propofol as
the lethal drug. The European Union had threatened to limit export
if propofol was used in the execution, potentially creating a
nationwide shortage of the popular anesthetic.
The Missouri Department of Corrections revised its protocol days
later, changing to pentobarbital that will be made through a
compounding pharmacy. Because the compounding pharmacy is part of
the execution team, few details about it have been made public.
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Herndon filed a new appeal Monday with the Missouri Supreme Court,
citing concerns about Franklin's mental illness and the state's
lethal injection process. Herndon has raised questions about what
could happen if the drug doesn't work properly, potentially leaving
the inmate in pain or brain-damaged but not dead. The state insists
its protocol is constitutional.
"I was encouraged by the way (Nixon) reacted to the propofol and
didn't let that happen," Herndon said. "I think there are similar,
if not more serious, concerns with the new protocol."
Franklin traveled the country on a killing spree from 1977 to 1980.
He is believed responsible for up to 20 killings and was convicted
in eight murders. The St. Louis County killing was the only case
that landed him on death row.
Herndon said Franklin is a paranoid schizophrenic who now regrets
his crimes, having had a change of heart after serving time
alongside black inmates. In an interview with the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch on Monday, Franklin insisted he no longer hates blacks
or Jews. While he was held at St. Louis County Jail, he said he
interacted with blacks at the jail, "and I saw they were people just
like us."
In addition to the killings, Franklin has admitted shooting and
wounding civil rights leader Vernon Jordan and Hustler magazine
publisher Larry Flynt.
Flynt, paralyzed from the waist down since the shooting in 1978,
has also sued to stop the execution because he doesn't believe the
death penalty is a deterrent.
[Associated
Press; JIM SALTER]
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