A week after a Kansas jury found a white supremacist guilty of murdering three people outside two local Jewish centers in 2014, the same group decided that he should be put to death. The avowed white supremacist, who has repeatedly admitted to the killings, was convicted of capital murder last week. None of the victims were Jewish, but Miller assumed they were Jewish when he shot them. As the retired physician stepped out of his truck, Miller “blew his head off” at close range with a shotgun loaded with buckshot, Howe said.
Among Cross’ witnesses, was his 39-year-old son, Frazier Glenn Miller III, who testified he doesn’t know where his father learned about “hating Jews and about hating other races”.
The 74-year-old gave a rambling, hour-long closing argument on Tuesday – at the end of which he told jurors he did not care what sentence he received.
The formal sentencing is set for November 10th and is expected to last half a day.
Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe had urged the jury to recommend the death sentence earlier Tuesday during closing arguments in the trial’s penalty phase. The judge overseeing the trial will now decide whether to follow the jury’s sentencing recommendation. LaManno was shot a few minutes later outside the Village Shalom care center where she had gone to visit her mother.
During the trial, Miller never attempted to claim he wasn’t responsible for the killings of William Corporon, 69, his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Underwood, and Terri LaManno, 53, on April 13, 2014.
Cross, a Vietnam War veteran, founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in his native North Carolina and later the White Patriot Party.
Relatives of the victims were present in the courtroom Tuesday and thanked prosecutors afterward.
Cross talked to the media and public during the trial, made comments to jurors and complained that his rights were being violated.
“I voluntarily sacrificed my freedom for my people,” he added, according to Reuters, which stated that he dared the jury to sentence him to death.
The state has not carried out the death penalty since it was reinstated in 1994.