On Monday, Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., a known white supremacist and former leader of North Carolina's White Patriot Party, was found guilty in last year's Overland Park Jewish Community Center's shooting. He admitted killing three people — Terri LaManno, William Corporon, and Reat Underwood — at two Jewish sites in suburban Kansas City, Missouri, and was convicted for capital murder and five other charges. On Tuesday, the Johnson County jury that convicted him was set to hear more evidence before deciding whether or not Miller would get the death sentence?
As the leader of the White Patriot Party — initially known as the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan — Miller was a prominent white supremacist throughout the 1980s. He participated in a Klan-Nazi shootout in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1979 and has unsuccessfully run for both the Senate and the House — on a white power platform — multiple times. On Monday, it took just over two hours for the jury to find Miller guilty on one count of capital murder, three counts of attempted murder and assault, and weapons charges. When District Judge Thomas Kelly Ryan scheduled a sentencing date of Oct. 30 on the non-capital charges for which Miller was convicted, Miller retorted, "I'd just as soon be on death row than sit around here." Then, as the jurors were filing out the courtroom, he told them, "You probably won't sleep tonight," and reportedly also gave the Nazi salute.
Throughout his trial, the 74-year-old Miller urged the jurors to demonstrate "courage" by not finding him guilty, and during his closing argument, he said that he has been "floating on a cloud" since the Overland Park killings. He also insisted that he wanted to stop the genocide against the white race. Miller explained that he "wanted to kill Jews, not people," declared that he hoped to "die a martyr," and was temporarily ejected from the courtroom due to his anti-Semitic comments and numerous, heated objections. Then, when the verdict was read, Miller said, "The fat lady just sang."
As Greensboro.com reported, the recommendation of the death penalty for Miller could be symbolic. Miller reportedly has emphysema, which damages the air sacs in one's lungs and gradually makes it more difficult to breathe, and he said that one of his motivations for carrying out the Overland Park killings was rooted in his belief that he would not live long.
According to The Kansas City Star, the penalty phase of the trial began on Tuesday morning. During the opening statements of this phase, assistant prosecutor Chris McMullin called Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. a "proud and remorseless killer that regrets only that he didn't kill more people." If the jury decides to recommend the death penalty for Miller, he could become the first person to be executed in Kansas since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1994.
