Jury sentences racist to die
Source: FROM WIRE SERVICES
BRYAN, Texas -- A jury decided Thursday that racist ex-convict Lawrence Russell Brewer
should pay with his life for the dragging death of a black man, sending him to death row to join a
buddy who also took part in the crime.
After 14 hours of deliberations over two days, the jury rejected arguments that a life sentence
would be adequate punishment for Brewer, 32.
"I'm not a death penalty fan, but this is a situation where if you don't give the death penalty to
this man, he'll hurt and kill again," Jasper County District Attorney Guy James Gray said.
Brewer's former prison buddy, John William King, 24, is already on death row, convicted in
February in the murder of James Byrd Jr.
Byrd, 49, was chained at the ankles to a pickup truck and dragged to pieces in the East Texas
town of Jasper last year in one of the nation's grisliest crimes since the civil rights era.
A third man, Shawn Allen Berry, 24, goes on trial next month. Prosecutors will seek the death
penalty in that case, too.
Prosecutors said Brewer and King were organizing a white supremacist organization and
wanted to do something dramatic to give their group publicity. Brewer later bragged about the
crime in jailhouse letters.
Brewer showed little reaction to the verdict, pursing his lips slightly. His mother, Helen, who
along with her husband had pleaded with the jury to spare his life, dabbed her face with a
handkerchief.
The jurors, who convicted Brewer on Monday, told the judge they would not discuss the case
with reporters.
Relatives of Byrd said the punishment sends a strong message that Texas will not tolerate such
an inhuman act. As the punishment was announced Thursday, one of Byrd's sisters, Clara
Taylor, said she thought of "how my brother must have screamed for help as his flesh was torn
from his body and he (Brewer) did nothing." Another sister, Stella Brumley, said, "I am relieved
that he won't be let out to do this kind of harm to harm to anyone else." Brewer testified that he
only tried to kick Byrd as Byrd and King fought. He said Berry slit the man's throat with a knife
and he didn't realize Berry had chained Byrd to the bumper until they began driving away.
DNA evidence showed Byrd's blood on the shoes of all three men.
In jailhouse letters introduced into evidence, Brewer referred to the murder and boasted about
"rolling a tire," which prosecutors said was a derogatory term for assaulting a black person.
"Well, I did it," Brewer wrote. "And no longer am I a virgin. It was a rush and I'm still licking my
lips for more." Brewer also wrote King after their arrests, saying that they had become "bigger
stars" than O.J. Simpson and that a life sentence would do them no justice. Brewer wrote that
lethal injection would be "a little old sleeping medicine." King was tried in Jasper, but Brewer's
case was moved to Bryan, about 150 miles west, because of intense publicity.
