(JTA) — Frazier Glenn Miller has pleaded not guilty to charges that he murdered three people outside two Kansas City-area Jewish institutions.
Miller, 74, entered the plea on Friday in the U.S. District Court in Johnson County, Kansas. He asked for a speedy trial, within 150 days, despite objections from his lawyers, Reuters reported.
Judge Thomas Kelly Ryan set an Aug. 17 trial date. The judge denied Miller’s request for Internet access while he is in jail awaiting trial.
Earlier this month, the judge ruled that there was enough evidence to try Miller, who also goes by the name Frazier Glenn Cross Jr., for the April 13, 2014 murders — two in the parking lot of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City in Overland Park, Kan., and one in the parking lot at Village Shalom, a Jewish assisted-living facility a few blocks away.
In addition to capital murder, Miller is charged with three counts of attempted first-degree murder, one count of aggravated assault and one count of criminal discharge of a weapon at a structure.
State prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty.
Miller, a former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon, told the Kansas City Star that he began planning the attacks when he became so sick with emphysema that he thought he would die soon and that he conducted reconnaissance missions of the JCC and Village Shalom in the days before the shootings.
“I wanted to make damned sure I killed some Jews or attacked the Jews before I died,” he told the newspaper.
None of his victims was Jewish.
