After hours of delay resulting from a series of 11th hour court appeals, Joseph Paul Franklin, the white supremacist serial killer from Missouri, was executed Wednesday morning once the Supreme Court ruled against granting a stay against his execution. 

Franklin, who received lethal injection at 4:07a.m. Pacific Time, rejected a final meal and gave no statement. 

In a bid to start race war, Franklin committed at least 22 killings between 1977 and 1980. According to CNN, he was incarcerated onto death row for the 1977 murder of Gerald Gordon outside a synagogue in St. Louis. 

As part of his last ditch effort to avoid execution, Franklin focused on the use of the drug pentobarbital as part of the cocktail of drugs used in lethal injection shots. 

U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey found his lawyers’ statements that pentobarbital carried a high risk of contamination and prolonged, unnecessary pain beyond that which is required to achieve death.”

The Judge went on to say that “given the irreversible nature of the death penalty and plaintiffs’ medical evidence and allegations, a stay is necessary to ensure that the defendants’ last act against Franklin is not permanent, irremediable cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eight Amendment.”

Franklin’s execution will not doubt raise fresh questions over the constitutionality of the death penalty, whether the death penalty meets to goals of the penal system, and whether the expense necessary to execute someone, arising mainly out of decades of court appeals, is really worth the cost to taxpayers. 

In Missouri, however, capital punishment remains on the books, and as a result the due process of law has been followed and the life of a man accused of taking the lives of more than 20 innocent people has now finally been ended. 

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Reach Executive Producer Christopher Coppock by email.