It’s Death For Avowed Racist

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 was weary from a life behind bars and wanted to die.

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

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 for 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. Franklin confessed a decade later, but could not be retried because of the right against double jeopardy.