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JustAnotherGen

(33,785 posts)
Wed Apr 24, 2019, 01:00 PM Apr 2019

James Byrd's Killer set to be executed today

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/us/james-byrd-jr-killer-execution.html

Mr. King and two other white men attacked Mr. Byrd, a 49-year-old black man who had been offered a late-night ride home in a perverted gesture of neighborliness. The men beat him, spray-painted his face, chained him to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him to his death on an isolated back road. The motive seemed shockingly clear-cut: Mr. King had come out of a stint in prison a committed white supremacist, his body a billboard of racist tattoos, including one depicting a black man hanged in a noose.

Less than a year after the killing, Mr. King became the first white man in modern Texas history to be sentenced to death for killing a black person. This was a troubling milestone given that, according to the Equal Justice Initiative, 344 black people were lynched in the 73 years after Reconstruction, a tally that includes only documented lynchings and stops in 1950.

There have been several other such death sentences in Texas since, including one handed down to an accomplice in the killing, Lawrence Russell Brewer, who was executed in 2011. But Mr. King was the first.

This has been on Ms. Harris’s mind.

“When you think about so many others that had to bury a loved one because of hate and didn’t get justice at all,” she said, talking of calls she has received from people with their own stories of racial mistreatment that were never addressed. “It’s heartbreaking.”



I still remain opposed to the death penalty. However, if by some miracle the murderer gets a stay, he shouldn't be allowed to vote.
7 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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James Byrd's Killer set to be executed today (Original Post) JustAnotherGen Apr 2019 OP
I hope the tie down team for Mr. King is all African American and that the warden is black too Botany Apr 2019 #1
I'm staunchly opposed to the death penalty, but I've got too many important things to do today to EffieBlack Apr 2019 #2
I have to get my JustAnotherGen Apr 2019 #3
K&R brer cat Apr 2019 #4
I cannot imagine that that depth of hate irisblue Apr 2019 #5
Me too - they won't get it at DU though JustAnotherGen Apr 2019 #6
To be blunt... irisblue Apr 2019 #7
 

EffieBlack

(14,249 posts)
2. I'm staunchly opposed to the death penalty, but I've got too many important things to do today to
Wed Apr 24, 2019, 02:06 PM
Apr 2019

protest this particular sentence.

Maybe after I finish everything I need to get done, including cleaning out the fishbowl and clipping this darned hangnail, I'll send an email or a tweet or something ... if, of course, I have the energy.

JustAnotherGen

(33,785 posts)
6. Me too - they won't get it at DU though
Fri Apr 26, 2019, 11:09 AM
Apr 2019

Last edited Fri Apr 26, 2019, 11:40 AM - Edit history (1)

Here - folks want the last man standing who did NOT get the death penalty -

The right to vote while serving his life time prison sentence.

Vote on things like - ohhhhh voting rights for black people.

This is why I crawled away from DU.

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