White supremacist executed for Texas dragging

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.