Oh btw....Texas set to execute man in race-motivated dragging death | Reuters

Texas set to execute man in race-motivated dragging death | Reuters


Today I hear a lot of folks REALLY EXPRESSING THEMSELVES about the Death Penalty and the like. Great discussions are being had on the topic. Today ,however, is a prime example of why I try not to speak in absolutes. You see, I'm not really with the condescending shit I am hearing though so this article is for you folks. Not that I can change your mind but I just want to make sure all sides of the issue are out there. Today one of the men accused of dragging James Byrd Jr. behind a pickup truck to his death is scheduled to die AS WELL. 

The same way some of you feel ABOUT WHY YOU DON'T WANT THE DEATH PENALTY is the same reason why I think it should be on a case by case basis. As it stands now, it is pretty blanketed in its application and I will agree that is faulty. I DON'T agree it should be done away with though. I'm not about to scream for the clemency of this man here below. Period. Point blank. Some of you have told me 'you don't believe in the death penalty period' but yet I don't see you giving ANY ATTENTION TO THIS YOUNG MAN. He meets most of your standard criteria for why he shouldn't be executed....THE MAIN ONE BEING HE IS A HUMAN BEING. He is not remorseful in the least but that shouldn't matter if the beliefs that some of you OUT HERE ARE TRYING TO MAKE FOLKS FEEL BAD FOR NOT HAVING are the ground that you stand on. Where is the outcry for this dude? The Twitter trending topics? Oh.....

Happy Hypocrite's Day!! 'Cause if you don't like the death penalty I'm going to need that same vigor shown not just with this man but EVERY TIME someone is up for execution. Don't worry...I won't wait on it as I know MOST OF YOU will have forgotten what you said today.





AUSTIN | Wed Sep 21, 2011 10:59am EDT

(Reuters) - Texas is set to execute on Wednesday a white supremacist convicted of helping to kill a black man by dragging him behind a truck, in what some call the most notorious race crime of the post-Civil Rights era.

Lawrence Russell Brewer, 44, was convicted of capital murder along with two other men in the kidnapping and slaying of James Byrd Jr. in 1998.

Brewer, together with John King and Shawn Berry, offered Byrd Jr. a ride home, attacked him on a country road, chained his ankles to the back of Berry's pickup, and then dragged him behind the truck for several miles in the vicinity of Jasper, Texas, according to a report by the Texas Attorney General's Office.

The east Texas killing touched off a national movement to strengthen punishments for crimes motivated by hate.

Brewer is set to die by lethal injection after 6 p.m. local time Wednesday in Huntsville, Texas.

He would be the 11th person executed in Texas this year. In Georgia, Troy Davis is also scheduled to be executed. If both executions go ahead, they would be the 34th and 35th in the country in 2011.

King, another white supremacist who was friends with Brewer in prison, is on death row awaiting an execution date. Berry is serving a life sentence.

The victim's only son, Ross Byrd, said late Tuesday that he wishes the state would show the mercy toward the condemned man that the killers never showed Byrd Jr., who died while his son was in military training.

"Life in prison would have been fine," Ross Byrd, 32, told Reuters. "I know he can't hurt my daddy anymore. I wish the state would take in mind that this isn't what we want."

While Brewer blamed Berry for the killing, prosecutors said it happened because King and Brewer wanted to start a white supremacist group in Jasper, according to the AG's report.

Byrd Jr.'s three children and wife have argued against use of the death penalty against his killers, but other members of his family have said they thought it was the right sentence.

Texas state Senator Rodney Ellis, a Houston Democrat who helped pass the state's James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act in 2001, said the death sentence in Brewer's case "will close a chapter in this tragic story."

"I cannot say for certain that it is a requirement in order for justice to be served," Ellis told Reuters, "but as Mr. Brewer was a ringleader in the most brutal hate crime in the post-Civil Rights era, it is certainly a very appropriate sentence."

Texas has the country's most active death row, executing more than four times as many people as any other state since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.