After Joseph Paul Franklin was arrested in 1980, prosecutors all over the country were waiting their turn to try him for murder. After a federal prosecutor failed to convince a jury that shooting a man just for being black was a civil rights violation, they lost their confidence. But Joseph Paul Franklin was desperate to get out of the federal prison where he was serving his first few life sentences.

Sources:

Mel Ayton, Dark Soul of the South: The Life and Crimes of Racist Killer Joseph Paul Franklin, Potomac Press, Inc., 2011

Thomas Martinez, Brotherhood of Murder: The Shocking Inside Story of The Order. McGraw Hill, 1988

Jessica Mitford, Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business, New York, Vintage Books, 1973

Devins, Neal, "Reagan Redux: Civil Rights Under Bush" (1993). Faculty Publications. 429.
https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs/429

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1985/06/28/reynolds-nomination-voted-down/115c0520-c848-4c17-a302-209a9a9d5a4a/

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-08-02-mn-747-story.html

https://people.umass.edu/~kastor/ceml_articles/cu_in_us.html

https://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC3_scans/3.journal.prisons.prisoners.griffin.1993.pdf

https://concrim.asc41.com/wp-content/uploads/j32.pdf

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1980/10/23/murders-of-blacks-baffle-us-officials/f8eefeac-1ca3-48de-85a0-4b9db645b01e/

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/02/24/us/study-accuses-justice-dept-of-waging-attack-on-civil-rights-laws.html

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/10/marion-prison-lockdown-thomas-silverstein-how-a-1983-murder-created-america-s-terrible-supermax-prison-culture.html

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One Man Race War: Joseph Paul Franklin, Pt. 5