An avowed white supremacist convicted of a notorious racist murder — chaining a black man to the back of a pickup truck and dragging him to his death — was executed on Wednesday.
John William King, 44, was put to death by lethal injection at 7:08pm at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville.
King was one of three white men convicted of carrying out the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr, one of the most gruesome racist killings in recent US history.
Lawrence Brewer was executed in 2011, while Shawn Berry — who cooperated with investigators — was given life in prison.
Berry testified during his trial that he and the two others were out drinking beer and cruising in a 1982 Ford pickup truck when they picked up Byrd, who was hitchhiking, and drove him to a remote country road.
The men severely beat the 49-year-old Byrd before chaining him by his ankles to the back of the truck.
Byrd was alive for about 3.2km while being dragged along the road, a pathologist testified during King’s trial.
He was decapitated when his body hit a concrete drain pipe, the pathologist said.
Byrd’s dismembered body was found outside a black church in the small town of Jasper, Texas, near the border with Louisiana.
Ten years after King’s conviction, then-US president Barack Obama signed a law aimed at preventing hate crimes that was named after Byrd and Matthew Shepard, a young gay man murdered the same year.
The 1999 death sentence for King was the first in Texas since the 1970s handed to a white man for killing a black man.
Two of Byrd’s sisters and a niece witnessed King’s execution, the fourth so far this year in the US.
“Today, we witnessed the peaceful and dignified execution of John King for the savage, brutal murder of James on June 7, 1998, really a modern-day lynching,” Carla Byrd Taylor — one of the victim’s sisters — said in a statement she read after the execution.
“King showed no remorse then and no remorse tonight,” Taylor said. “His execution is a just punishment for his actions.”
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number