White supremacist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin was executed Wednesday by the state of Missouri, NBC News reported. Franklin, 63, who targeted blacks and Jews in a cross-country killing spree from 1977 to 1980 and who shot Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, was put to death a short time after a federal appeals court, and later the Supreme Court, denied him a stay, The Associated Press reported. A lower court had delayed the execution, saying that the state's disputed protocol for administering lethal injection had to be resolved. A second stay was granted by another judge after Franklin’s attorneys argued he was not mentally competent enough to be put to death, according to the AP. Franklin was convicted in eight killings, and was executed for a sniper attack outside a suburban St. Louis synagogue in 1977. He claimed responsibility for 20 killings in all. It was Missouri's first execution in nearly three years.
