Missouri executes serial killer after Supreme Court clears way

Missouri serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin was executed by lethal injection on Wednesday after the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for him to be put to death for murdering a man outside a synagogue in 1977, a corrections spokesman said. Franklin, 63, was pronounced dead at 6:17 a.m. CST (1217 GMT) at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, said Mike O'Connell, a spokesman for the Missouri Department of Public Safety. The U.S. Supreme Court had cleared the way earlier on Wednesday for the execution to move forward, lifting two stays that would have allowed Franklin to challenge Missouri's new lethal drug protocol, and argue his claim that he was mentally incompetent and could not be executed. Franklin was the 35th inmate executed in the United States in 2013 and the first in Missouri in nearly three years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.



via Health News Headlines - Yahoo! News http://news.yahoo.com/u-judges-grant-missouri-convicted-killer-stay-execution-034652607.html