When Rowles returned, all King would say was, "I wasn't there." Louvon Byrd Harris, one of Byrd's sisters, said King's execution sent a "message to the world that when you do something horrible like that, that you have to pay the high penalty."Ĭompared to "all the suffering" her brother suffered before his death, Harris said King and Brewer got "an easy way out."īilly Rowles, who led the investigation into Byrd's death when he was sheriff in Jasper County, said after King was taken to death row in 1999, he offered to detail the crime as soon as his co-defendants were convicted. In a 2001 interview with the AP, King said he was an "avowed racist" but wasn't "a hate-monger murderer." King declined an interview request from The Associated Press in the weeks leading up to his execution. The third participant, Shawn Allen Berry, was sentenced to life in prison. Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed in 2011. King, who grew up in Jasper and was known as "Bill," was the second man executed for Byrd's killing. Over the years, King had also suggested the brutal slaying was not a hate crime, but a drug deal gone bad involving his co-defendants. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles also turned down King's request for either a commutation of his sentence or a 120-day reprieve. Richard Ellis, one of King's attorneys, wrote in his petition to the Supreme Court. King repeatedly expressed to defense counsel that he wanted to present his innocence claim at trial," A. Byrd sometime prior to his death and was not present at the scene of his murder. King maintained his absolute innocence, claiming that he had left his co-defendants and Mr. "From the time of indictment through his trial, Mr. Supreme Court rejected King's last-minute appeal. King's appellate lawyers had tried to stop his execution, arguing King's constitutional rights were violated because his trial attorneys didn't present his claims of innocence and conceded his guilt. Local officials say the reputation is undeserved. The killing of Byrd was a hate crime that put a national spotlight on Jasper, a town of about 7,600 residents near the Texas-Louisiana border that was branded with a racist stigma it has tried to shake off ever since. and the third in Texas, the nation's busiest capital punishment state. He was the fourth inmate executed this year in the U.S. King, 44, was put to death at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas. King was openly racist and had offensive tattoos on his body, including one of a black man with a noose around his neck hanging from a tree, according to authorities. Prosecutors said Byrd was targeted because he was black. The 49-year-old Byrd was alive for at least 2 miles (3 kilometers) before his body was ripped to pieces in the early morning hours of June 7, 1998. John William King, who was white, received lethal injection for the slaying nearly 21 years ago of James Byrd Jr., who was chained to the back of a truck and dragged for nearly 3 miles (5 kilometers) along a secluded road in the piney woods outside Jasper, Texas. history was executed Wednesday in Texas for the dragging death of a black man. HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) - An avowed racist who orchestrated one of the most gruesome hate crimes in U.S.
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