Hustler Founder Larry Flynt to Missouri: Don't Execute Joseph Franklin
by Daniel Wicentowski
Larry Flynt hasn't forgiven Joseph Franklin, the serial-killing white supremacist who 35 years ago shot and paralyzed Flynt on the steps of Georgia courthouse after Hustler ran a photo spread of an interracial couple.
Franklin is set to be executed on November 20 for a laundry list of horrific killings, not to mention a handful of bank robberies and bombed synagogues.
But Flynt doesn't want Franklin dead.
In a guest column published Thursday in The Hollywood Reporter, the porno patriarch argued that keeping Franklin locked up for life was punishment enough.
Franklin has been sentenced by the Missouri Supreme Court to death by legal injection on Nov. 20. I have every reason to be overjoyed with this decision, but I am not. I have had many years in this wheelchair to think about this very topic. 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.
Now, none of this should be interpreted as a sign that Flynt has gone soft in his old age, as evidenced in this passage:
In all the years since the shooting, I have never come face-to-face with Franklin. I would love 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.
by Daniel Wicentowski
Larry Flynt hasn't forgiven Joseph Franklin, the serial-killing white supremacist who 35 years ago shot and paralyzed Flynt on the steps of Georgia courthouse after Hustler ran a photo spread of an interracial couple.
Franklin is set to be executed on November 20 for a laundry list of horrific killings, not to mention a handful of bank robberies and bombed synagogues.
But Flynt doesn't want Franklin dead.
In a guest column published Thursday in The Hollywood Reporter, the porno patriarch argued that keeping Franklin locked up for life was punishment enough.
Franklin has been sentenced by the Missouri Supreme Court to death by legal injection on Nov. 20. I have every reason to be overjoyed with this decision, but I am not. I have had many years in this wheelchair to think about this very topic. 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.
Now, none of this should be interpreted as a sign that Flynt has gone soft in his old age, as evidenced in this passage:
In all the years since the shooting, I have never come face-to-face with Franklin. I would love 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.
