Racist Talks Jury Into Death Sentence

An avowed racist who got away with shooting civil rights leader Vernon Jordan persuaded a jury Friday to recommend he get the death penalty for killing a man in a 1977 sniper attack on a synagogue.

Joseph Paul Franklin, who served as his own lawyer, had warned the jurors that he would kill again.

Franklin, 46, was convicted of murdering Gerald Gordon as he left a bar mitzvah.

In 1982, Franklin was acquitted on charges of wounding Jordan in 1980. A decade later, Franklin admitted to the crime.

Franklin is serving six life sentences for killing an interracial couple in Wisconsin in 1977 and killing two black men in Salt Lake City in 1980 as they jogged with white women.

He has also been indicted on charges of shooting Hustler publisher Larry Flynt.