A man is seen carrying a photograph of James Byrd Jr. outside the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit in 2011. By Eli Rosenberg and Eli Rosenberg General assignment reporter covering national and breaking news Email Bio Follow Lindsey Bever Lindsey Bever General assignment reporter covering national and breaking news Email Bio Follow April 23 at 11:11 PM James Byrd Jr.’s body was found in pieces on the side of a country road in Texas in June 1998.
A gruesome scene From the site where Byrd’s remains were found in 1998, police followed a blood trail up a logging road, finding a grassy area where it appeared a fight had occurred. There they found “a cigarette lighter engraved with the words ‘KKK’ and ‘Possum,’ three cigarette butts, a can of ‘fix-a-flat,’ a CD, a pack of Marlboros, beer bottles, a button from Byrd’s shirt, Byrd’s baseball cap, and a wrench inscribed with the name ‘Berry,’” according to summary written by a U.S.
The cigarette butts were also DNA tested, and one came up with a hit for King, who had previously served a prison sentence for burglary. And there was other evidence that linked him to the crime. “During his first stint in prison , King was the ‘exalted cyclops’ of the Confederate Knights of America , a white-supremacist gang,” an appeals court wrote in 2018. “King’s drawings displayed scenes of racial lynching. Several witnesses testified that King would not go to a black person’s house and would leave a party if a black person showed up.
A long history of appeals The two other defendants in the case, Brewer and Berry were tried later for their crimes. Brewer was convicted of capital murder and was executed in 2011. Berry, the last to be tried, was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted that November; prosecutors said that he joined the murder for the thrill but did not share Brewer and King’s white supremacist believes.
Tensions in Jasper, Tex. Some community members still talk about the negative impression left by the horrific crime and legal aftermath. Wilson, the lead investigator, said that he felt that the media had given Jasper the image of a backward country town. Newton County Sheriff Billy Rowles, who was the sheriff in Jasper County in 1998, told The Washington Post that the case had “turned him into an old man.”
No closure; but knowing his killer is dead brings me peace...if he got life he still would have the pleasure of living, this way he is burning in HELL🙂
No it won’t. His family will mourn til their last breath. His murderers’ families will mourn til their last breath. His racist murderers and racists like them are the cancer of America.
I find it striking that the death of a person is discussed as a matter of satisfying public or private needs for closure.
Stupid question. Of course not morons but justice will be served. Kill convicted murderers not INNOCENT BABIES.
Yes it will. Justice will be served.
I can guarantee that he will not reoffend
Two wrongs don’t make a right ? And the state is more an evil murderer than him he was evil what’s your excuse ?
Some psychopaths deserve the death penalty, but why in other cases, the first reaction of many of you is to say? The death penalty is not the solution
Proving your so called paper has always told half the story. Since 1997 You should print that the inbdred redneck that killed Byrd was raped by bird earlier that year in jail
The black woman lighting a small white child on fire for being white isn't the most atrocious recent hate crime?
You are supporters of the execution of this murderer Why do you denounce when Saudi Arabia executed terrorists?
Why did it take so long?
I'd prefer he rotted in jail with no human contact of any kind until he died of Vitamin D deficiency, covered in sores. Alone. No visitors. Rotting.
It’s a small band-aid on what is still a seething, seeping, septic wound of racial tension and disparity - but it’s something.
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