September 21, 2011 in Nation/World, News

White supremacist executed for Texas dragging

Michael Graczyk Associated Press
 
Tags:executionJames Byrd Jr.Lawrence Russell BrewerTexas
Butch Ireland photo

FILE - In a Monday Sept. 20, 1999 file photo, Lawrence Russell Brewer listens to the guilty verdict being read in his capital murder trial at the Brazos County Courthouse in Bryan, Texas. Brewer, 44, one of two purported white supremacists condemned for Byrd’s death, was executed Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2011 for participating in chaining Byrd to the back of a pickup truck, dragging the black man along the road and dumping what was left of his shredded body outside a black church and cemetery.
(Full-size photo)

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — White supremacist gang member Lawrence Russell Brewer has been executed for the infamous dragging death slaying of James Byrd Jr., a black man from East Texas.

The 49-year-old Byrd of Jasper was chained to the back of a pickup truck 13 years ago and pulled whip-like to his death along a bumpy asphalt road. It’s one of the most grisly hate crime murders in recent Texas history.

No last-day appeals were filed to try to spare the 44-year-old Brewer from lethal injection in Huntsville.

He’s the first of two men convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death to be executed. Accomplice John William King remains in prison while his case is in the appeals courts. A third man, Shawn Berry, got a life sentence.

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