Brewer and two accomplices chained James Byrd Jr., 49, to the back of a pickup truck and then dragged him down a bumpy road until he was not just killed but actually decapitated and dismembered.
"No," Brewer said when asked if he had any final words, a single tear hanging in the corner of his right eye. "I have no final statement."
A lethal injection was administered to Brewer at 6:11 p.m. and he was pronounced dead 10 minutes later. Both of his parents and two of his victim's sisters were in attendance.
One of Brewer's accomplices, John William King, 36, also was convicted of capital murder in Byrd's death and is currently on death row pending sppeal. A third accomplice, Shawn Berry, 36, was sentenced to life in prison.
"One down and one to go," said retired Sheriff Billy Rowles, who initially investigated the horrific scene. "That's kind of cruel but that's reality."
"He had choices," Byrd's sister, Clara Taylor said of Brewer the day before the execution. "He made the wrong choices." She said that someone from her brother's family needed to bear witness to Brewer's execution.
Around 8:30 a.m., Rowles discovered the grisly scene, in which body parts and blood were spread over a wide area.
"I didn't go down that road too far before I knew this was going to be a bad deal," he testifed at Brewer's trial.
According to testimony at the trial, the three white men drove Byrd out into the country and then stopped along an isolated logging road. There, they attacked their victim, tied him to the truck bumper with a 24-foot logging chain, and dragged him for three miles, dumping his mutilated remains between a black church and cemetery where the pavement on the road ended.
Police arrested Brewer, King, and Berry by the end of the next day.
No comments:
Post a Comment