Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Attorney general: Serial killer's last minute claims have no merit

The execution of serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin is scheduled for midnight tonight and according to the Missouri attorney general's office, it should be allowed to proceed.

In a brief filed this morning in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, Assistant Attorney General Michael Spillane said that when the state of Missouri removed propofol from the drugs it is using for capital punishment, it left Franklin with no case.

Propofol, the brief said was "central to the initial claims remaining in the original complaint," which was filed last year on behalf of all of Missouri's death row inmates, including Franklin.

By removing propofol, Spillane says, it made Franklin's claim of cruel and unusual punishment without merit.

The following description of Franklin's crime comes from the Missourinet website:

Franklin is on Missouri’s Death Row, scheduled to die by lethal injection Nov. 20 for staking outside of a St. Louis area synagogue and firing on Jewish congregation members as they left the service.
He has been convicted of several murders, and given six life sentences, as well as a death sentence. He confessed to the attempted murders of two prominent men: Larry Flynt in 1978, and Vernon Jordan, Jr., the civil rights activist, in 1980. Franklin has not been convicted in either of those cases.

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