White supremacist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin was executed in Missouri by lethal injection Wednesday morning.
Franklin’s execution was originally scheduled for around midnight Wednesday morning but court appeals delayed the execution for many hours, reports CNN. The execution ultimately took place just after 6 a.m. local time after the Supreme Court rejected his last plea to postpone the execution any further.
The 63-year-old died ten minutes after receiving the lethal injection at Bonne Terre’s state prison.
Wednesday’s execution was the first in Missouri in three years, reports The Kansas City Star.
Franklin was sentenced to death after being convicted in the murder of Gerald Gordon, when he shot the man outside of a St. Louis synagogue in 1977. Out of the seven murders he was convicted of, this was the only one that he received the death penalty for.
According to the BBC, Franklin confessed to 20 different murders, all of which were fueled by his hatred for Jewish and black people.
He said that he was told to start a race war by God.
One of Franklin’s living victims, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, has spoken out the execution of Franklin. Franklin shot and partially paralyzed Flynt in 1978 after seeing that a picture of a mixed race couple had been published in the magazine, but Flynt does not agree with the death penalty.
“The government has no business at all being in the business of killing people,” Flynt told CNN.
Franklin did not give a final statement before his execution Wednesday but he reportedly said that he had abandoned his racist views, according to the BBC.