Jay Nixon says no clemency for racist killer Joseph Franklin

A governor’s clemency is one of the final reprieves from the gallows for the condemned man, a request rarely granted. 

Joseph Paul Franklin won’t find refuge from Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who on Monday denied the racist serial killer’s plea for a way out of his forthcoming execution.

Franklin received the death penalty in Missouri following his 1997 conviction of shooting at members of a synagogue in Richmond Heights in 1977, killing Gerald Gordon and wounding others. He spent time before and after that Missouri shooting carrying out acts of violence against others in the name of racial and religious supremacy.

Franklin, barring any last-minute legal maneuvers, will die at the hands of the state on Wednesday.

Franklin tried to kill Larry Flynt in 1978, shooting the porn purveyor and free-speech advocate in Georgia after Franklin became upset at seeing images of interracial sex in the pages of Hustler, which Flynt produced. The shooting failed to end Flynt’s life but put the publisher in a wheelchair for life.
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Flynt sought to prevent Franklin’s execution, partly because he thought life in prison was a more appropriate punishment and partly because Missouri shrouded several aspects of the forthcoming execution in secrecy, including the identity of an anesthesiologist taking part in the execution whose participation contravenes professional ethics rules for the medical industry.

CNN caught up with Franklin for an unsettling interview on Monday, where he offers halfhearted regret for shooting children, explains that he committed several acts of violence to ignite a race war and says he viewed women as enemies of the white race.