Missouri attorney general asks for execution date for racial killer

Attorney General Chris Koster asked the state Supreme Court to set a date to execute Joseph Franklin for the 1977 slaying of a man outside a suburban St. Louis synagogue. It was the only case in which Franklin was sentenced to death.

A drifter from Mobile, Ala., Franklin has said he tried to start a race war by traveling around the country shooting people. After being convicted of the Missouri slaying, Franklin bragged in 1997 to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Let's just say, I've got as many notches in my belt as Billy the Kid."

When he confessed in 1994 to the synagogue slaying, Franklin already was serving several life sentences in a federal prison for the murders of two black joggers in Salt Lake City and an interracial couple in Madison, Wis., and the bombing of a Jewish synagogue in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Franklin, who is white, was later convicted of killing two black teenagers in Cincinnati and a black man in Chattanooga.

He also has been linked by authorities or his own confessions to about 10 other racially motivated slayings in a half-dozen other states between 1977 and 1980, although he was never tried for the crimes.

Franklin also claimed he shot Flynt in Georgia in 1978 because the magazine published a photo of an interracial couple.

The only murder for which Franklin received a death sentence was the Oct. 8, 1977, sniper shooting of Gerald Gordon, 42, as a crowd dispersed from a bar mitzvah at the Brith Sholom Kneseth Israel Congregation in Richmond Heights, Mo. Two other men were wounded.

"Anti-Semitism and racism were at the heart of Franklin's crimes," Koster said in a statement Tuesday. "This kind of hatred cannot be tolerated by society. It is time for justice to be served."

In a motion filed with the Missouri Supreme Court, the attorney general's office said Franklin has exhausted all traditional appeals.

Franklin's attorney, Jennifer Herndon, said more appeals are likely, though she did not elaborate on any particular grounds Tuesday. Franklin has at times sought to be executed, but Herndon said he frequently changes his mind.

"He's very mentally ill," said Herndon in citing one reason the defense believes he should not be executed. "I don't think he currently wants to be executed, but there's nothing you could write that would be accurate."