With it being the anniversary of the egregious murder of
James Byrd Jr. in 1998 and the eve of the civil trial of George Zimmerman, I
thought it prudent to do a post about a few of the most racially fueled murder
cases in our recent history.
The Murder of James Byrd Jr.:
James Byrd Jr. was
born in Beaumont, Texas on May 2nd 1949 making him 49 at the time of
his death. On June 7th 1998, Byrd was walking along a street in
Jasper, Texas and three men in a pickup truck offered him a ride, Byrd accepted and
climbed into the men’s vehicle. The three men were 24 year old Shawn Berry, who
was driving and knew Byrd from in town, 23 year old John King, and 31 year old
Lawrence Brewer.
Instead of taking Byrd home as asked, Berry drove to a
county road outside of town, dragged from inside the truck and overpowered him
as he tried to flee. They proceeded to beat him, urinate on him, and chain his
ankles to the back of the truck and dragged him for several miles. The men
claimed they had slit Byrd’s throat, thus killing him before they dragged him,
but Byrd’s autopsy reveled that he had been attempting to keep his head up of
the road during the dragging.
Byrd died when his right arm and head were severed from his
body, but his intact brain and skull indicated that he was alive during all of
the attack. The men then unchained their victims body and left him in front of
a black church, not to absolve themselves and to make the victim be at peace,
but to make the crime as shocking as possible in that he would be found by his peers.
Along the road where his body had been dragged police found
a wrench with ‘Berry’ etched into it and they also found a lighter with King’s
prison nickname ‘Possum’ written on it, which would prove important for the
investigation and prosecution.
The next day on June 8th, Police found the
scattered remains of Byrd in 81 places along the road in and around Jasper.
Because of the nature of the crime, and being that two of the suspects were
known white surpremisit, the FBI was called within the day to help investigate
the obvious hate crime.
King had several racist tattoos, including a black man being
hanged and Nazi symbols. Also, he was a member of the Confederate Knights of
America, a white prison gang that indoctrinated him while he was in danger
while in in prison for unrelated crimes. Brewer was a also a member of an white
surpremisit group and joined for the same reason, to ward off unwanted
attention in prison. Both men alleged that they were raped by black inmates,
perhaps sparking and already bred hate for African Americans.
All three men would subsequently be charged with the crime,
Brewer and King would be sentenced to death, while Berry the driver, who the
courts could not definitively prove was a white surpremisit and racist, was
sentenced to life.
The Aftermath:
-
Brewer was executed by lethal injection on
September 21st 2011, King remains on death row, and Berry is still
serving his life sentence.
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Many movies and songs have been inspired by
Byrd’s death and the motives behind it.
-
In 2009, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr.
hate Crimes Prevention Act was adopted and expanded the 1969 United States
Federal Hate Crime Law.
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