Larry Flynt, the porn publisher known for his Hustler magazine, wrote that he does not want the serial killer who shot and crippled him to be executed.
Flynt was shot by Joseph Paul Franklin in 1978, leaving him paralyzed. Franklin was convicted of shooting five people and injuring others and has been in prison since 1980. According to The Associated Press, he is set to be executed on Nov. 20 in Missouri.
But in an essay for The Hollywood Reporter, Flynt said that he does not want Franklin executed, even though he would love to have “an hour in a room with him and a pair of wire-cutters and pliers, so I could inflict the same damage on him that he inflicted on me.
But, I do not want to kill him, nor do I want to see him die,” he wrote.
Flynt recounted how Franklin said he targeted him because he published a photo spread with a black man and a white woman. Franklin’s other victims did include an interracial couple and civil rights activist Vernon Jordan Jr. Another victim was a man outside a synagogue.
Franklin may have confessed to the crimes, but Flynt is not a supporter of the death penalty. “Supporters of capital punishment argue that it is a deterrent which prevents potential murderers from committing future crimes, but research has failed to provide a shred of valid scientific proof to that effect whatsoever,” Flynt wrote.
He suggested that life in prison is the best punishment and that it doesn’t actually save the taxpayer any money. “Execution has been proven to be far more expensive for the state than a conviction of life without parole, due to the long and complex judicial process required for capital cases,” he noted.
He concluded his essay, “As I see it, the sole motivating factor behind the death penalty is vengeance, not justice, and I firmly believe that a government that forbids killing among its citizens should not be in the business of killing people itself.”
image: Glenn Francis, www.PacificProDigital.com/Wikimedia Commons
