Flynt launched a campaign to prevent the execution of the man who shot and paralyzed him in 1978. As the story goes, a white supremacist named Joseph Paul Franklin shot Flynt on the steps of a Georgia courthouse allegedly because Flynt published a racy interracial image in his magazine. In 2013, Franklin faced execution in the state of Missouri, and Flynt tried to save his attacker's life.
"I do not want to kill him, nor do I want to see him die," Flynt said in a first-person article published in The Hollywood Reporter. "As far as the severity of punishment is concerned, to me, a life spent in a 3-by-6-foot cell is far harsher than the quick release of a lethal injection..."
"I have had many years in this wheelchair to think about this very topic," Flynt said. "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."
Franklin was executed weeks later.
