James Byrd Jr. Case: Murder, Trials, and Hate Crime Laws

The James Byrd Jr. case refers to the June 7, 1998, murder of a 49-year-old Black man in Jasper, Texas, who was chained by his ankles to the back of a pickup truck and dragged roughly three miles to his death by three white men. John William King, Lawrence Russell Brewer, and Shawn Allen Berry were each convicted of capital murder. Brewer was executed in 2011, King in 2019, and Berry is serving a life sentence. The killing prompted Texas to pass the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act in 2001 and, together with the murder of Matthew Shepard, led to the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act signed by President Barack Obama in 2009.

What Happened on June 7, 1998

Byrd was walking home along a road in Jasper on the night of June 7, 1998, when Shawn Allen Berry pulled up in his pickup truck with King and Brewer as passengers and offered him a ride. Berry later said he recognized Byrd as someone who regularly walked around town.¹

Instead of driving him home, the three men took Byrd to a remote wooded clearing east of Jasper. King and Brewer beat him severely, taunted him, urinated on him using a baseball bat, and sprayed black paint on his face.²¹ They then chained him by his ankles to the back of the truck. King drove, dragging Byrd along a dirt trail and Huff Creek Road for about three miles.

Forensic evidence indicated Byrd was conscious for much of the ordeal, struggling to keep his head above the pavement. He died when his body struck a concrete culvert, severing his head, right arm, and shoulder.¹ The three men dumped what remained of his body near an African American church and went to a barbecue.³

Police followed a trail of blood, drag marks, and body parts stretching three miles. At the starting point of the dragging, investigators found evidence of a struggle along with Byrd’s hat and cigarette butts that linked all three men to the scene. A cigarette lighter engraved with “Possum” and “KKK” was also recovered.⁴

The Three Killers

King and Brewer became radicalized during overlapping stints at the Beto I Unit, a maximum-security prison in East Texas. King entered the Texas prison system in July 1995 on an eight-year sentence. A former prison psychologist testified he was likely attacked by Black inmates and joined white supremacist groups for protection.⁵⁶⁷⁴

By the time both men were paroled in 1997, King had covered roughly 65 percent of his body in racist tattoos, including Nazi SS lightning bolts, Klan emblems, a swastika, the words “Aryan Pride,” and a depiction of a Black man hanging from a tree.⁵⁴ He planned to launch a local chapter of the Confederate Knights in Jasper called the “Texas Rebel Soldiers.” A fellow inmate and Aryan Brotherhood member testified that King had discussed an initiation ritual requiring the kidnapping and killing of a Black man. Prosecutors argued Byrd’s murder was committed in part to promote this fledgling organization and to initiate Berry into the group.⁷

Berry, unlike King and Brewer, did not have a documented white supremacist background. Prosecutors described him as a longtime friend of King’s who lacked the same racist history.⁷

Trials and Sentences

John William King

King was tried first, in Jasper County, and convicted of capital murder on February 25, 1999. The charge was murder committed in the course of kidnapping. DNA from a cigarette butt at the scene matched King, blood on a pair of sandals in his room matched Byrd, and a logging chain was found near the apartment the three men shared. Prosecutors used his tattoos and jailhouse letters to establish motive. In one letter to Brewer, King wrote, “we have made history and shall die proudly remembered if need be.”⁴

King maintained his innocence, claiming Berry had dropped him and Brewer off before the killing. He tried to have his court-appointed lawyers replaced, saying they were unwilling to argue his innocence rather than simply trying to spare him from death. The trial court denied the request. The jury sentenced him to death.⁴

Lawrence Russell Brewer

Brewer’s trial was moved from Jasper to Bryan, Texas, on a change of venue. He was convicted of capital murder in 1999.⁸ Brewer testified that he was a bystander and blamed King and Berry. The jury rejected that account, unanimously found he posed a continuing threat to society and had intended to kill Byrd, and imposed a death sentence.⁹

Shawn Allen Berry

Berry was also convicted of capital murder but avoided the death penalty. His defense argued he had tried to stop the attack but was afraid of King and Brewer.¹⁰ He was sentenced to life in prison. He is held at the Ramsey I Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and becomes eligible for parole on June 7, 2038.¹¹

Executions

Brewer’s conviction was affirmed on direct appeal by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on April 3, 2002. He pursued federal habeas relief, raising 15 issues that were all denied by the district court. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the denial in 2006, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2007.¹² Brewer was executed by lethal injection on September 21, 2011, at the Huntsville prison and pronounced dead at 6:21 p.m. His final words: “No. I have no final statement.”⁸

King’s legal fight lasted two decades. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed his conviction and death sentence on October 18, 2000, rejecting arguments that the evidence was insufficient and that the trial court improperly denied his request for different counsel.¹³ State habeas petitions alleging ineffective assistance of counsel were denied, with a second application dismissed as an abuse of the writ. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the denial of his federal habeas petition in March 2018, finding trial counsel’s performance constitutionally adequate.¹⁴

King’s final challenge invoked the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in McCoy v. Louisiana, which held that a criminal defendant has the constitutional right to insist that counsel not concede guilt. His attorneys argued that his trial lawyers had effectively admitted his guilt over his repeated objections, pointing to letters King had written to the court during trial and to a Dallas newspaper insisting on his innocence.¹⁵ On April 22, 2019, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the claim in a 5-4 vote, dismissing King’s application as an abuse of the writ. Judge Michael Keasler, writing for the four dissenters, warned of a “horrible stain” on the court’s reputation if King’s claims were later vindicated or if the Supreme Court ruled McCoy applied retroactively.¹⁶ The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene about 30 minutes after the scheduled execution time.³

King was executed by lethal injection on April 24, 2019, at the age of 44. He spoke no final words from the gurney. A prison spokesman later read a pre-written statement: “Capital punishment: Them without the capital get the punishment.”¹⁷ Two of Byrd’s sisters and a niece witnessed the execution. Louvon Harris said, “He wants to find a way not to die, but he didn’t give James that chance. He’s still getting off easy because your body’s not going to be flying behind a pickup truck being pulled apart.”³

The Hate Crime Laws That Bear His Name

Texas James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act

Byrd’s murder became the catalyst for Texas to overhaul hate crime laws that courts had deemed unenforceable as written.¹⁸ State Representative Senfronia Thompson authored House Bill 587, and Senator Rodney Ellis sponsored it in the Senate. An earlier version had died in a Senate committee in 1999; supporters blamed then-Governor George W. Bush, whose stated position was that all crimes are hate crimes and that existing law already provided harsh sentences for violent offenses.¹⁹

Governor Rick Perry signed the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act into law on May 11, 2001. The act increases penalties by one level for crimes motivated by bias against a victim’s race, color, disability, religion, national origin, age, gender, or sexual preference, and it provides funding to help local jurisdictions investigate and prosecute such offenses.²⁰

Federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act

At the federal level, Byrd’s murder and the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming drove years of advocacy that ended with the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, signed by President Barack Obama in October 2009. Under the Thirteenth Amendment, the law criminalizes violence motivated by race, color, religion, or national origin without requiring proof that the victim was engaged in a federally protected activity, removing a major barrier present in earlier statutes. Under the Commerce Clause, it extends protections to violence motivated by gender, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity, provided the crime affects interstate commerce.²¹ It also authorizes federal grants for state and local law enforcement and, for the first time, requires federal tracking of hate crimes based on gender identity.²²

By the end of 2013, the Department of Justice had secured 44 convictions under the law across 16 states.²³

Memorials and the Byrd Family’s Work

The city of Jasper named James Byrd Jr. Memorial Park in his honor in 1999. In 2023, at the family’s request, the mayor issued a proclamation declaring June 7 as James Byrd Jr. Day. Byrd’s burial plot at the Jasper City Cemetery has been desecrated twice, prompting the family to install an iron fence around the grave.¹⁹

The Byrd Foundation for Racial Healing was established by the family in 1999 to combat racially motivated hatred through education. Led by Louvon Harris as president, the foundation has operated a hotline for victims of discrimination, provided counseling, distributed anti-hate literature in schools, and offered student scholarships. For the 20th anniversary of the murder, it placed a memorial bench outside the Jasper County Courthouse inscribed with the phrase, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Harris has said fundraising is a persistent obstacle because “people don’t want to fund it because they think there’s no hate in the world.”¹⁹

1
Britannica. Murder of James Byrd, Jr.
2
NPR. Texas to Execute Man Convicted in Dragging Death of James Byrd Jr.
3
Texas Tribune. Texas Execution John William King James Byrd
4
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. King v. State, No. 73,433
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Time. Texas: A Life for a Life
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Texas Observer. Hate on the Inside
7
CNN. Dragging Death Trial
8
CBS News. White Supremacist Lawrence Russell Brewer Executed for Dragging Death
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CNN. Texas Dragging Death Execution
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Dan Rather Journalist. Killing Time
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Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Inmate Search: Shawn Allen Berry
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Clark County Prosecutor. Lawrence Russell Brewer
13
FindLaw. King v. State
14
U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit. King v. Davis, No. 16-70018
15
TCADP. Divided Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Denies Stay of Execution for John King
16
Death Penalty Information Center. John William King Executed in Infamous Lynching Case
17
El Paso Times. James Byrd Jr. Killer John William King Last Words Were Read Out Loud
18
UPI. Hate Crimes Bill Advances in Texas
19
Texas Tribune. James Byrd Death Texas Hate Crime Racism
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Texas Senate. James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Act Signed
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U.S. Department of Justice. Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act
22
Matthew Shepard Foundation. Eliminating Hate Crimes
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Matthew Shepard Foundation. Sixth Anniversary Shepard-Byrd Act