James Byrd Jr.

Case background and investigation

James Byrd Jr. was born on May 2, 1949, and lived in Jasper, a town in East Texas. Relatives quoted by the Texas Tribune remembered him as a sociable man and a gifted musician who played piano and trumpet. He was 49 when he was killed in the early hours of June 7, 1998.

According to accounts of the trials, Byrd accepted a ride that night from Shawn Berry, who knew him from around town and was driving a pickup truck with two passengers, John William King and Lawrence Russell Brewer. CBS News reported that the attack took place at about 2:30 a.m. on a road outside Jasper. Byrd was chained by the ankles to the truck with a logging chain and dragged for roughly three miles along Huff Creek Road. Evidence presented in the case indicated that he was alive for a substantial part of that distance and died when his body struck a culvert. His remains were left along the same road, near a Black church and cemetery.

All three men were in custody by the end of the following day. The Texas Tribune reported that investigators recovered items along the road, including a cigarette lighter bearing Ku Klux Klan markings. The Texas Tribune described King and Brewer as avowed white supremacists.

The three were tried separately in 1999, and each was convicted of capital murder. King was tried first, in Jasper, and sentenced to death. Brewer's trial was moved to Bryan, about 150 miles away, and he also received a death sentence. Berry, tried in Jasper, was sentenced to life in prison; Wikipedia's summary of the case states that he becomes eligible for parole in 2038.

Brewer was executed by lethal injection at Huntsville on September 21, 2011. King was executed there on April 24, 2019, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to recommend clemency, CBS News reported. Byrd's sister Clara Taylor said afterward that King had shown no remorse.

The killing prompted changes in the law. In 2001 Texas Governor Rick Perry signed the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act, which increased penalties for offenses motivated by bias. On October 28, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which broadened federal hate crime law. Byrd's family also established a foundation devoted to racial healing, and some relatives, including his son Ross, later spoke publicly against the death penalty.