James Byrd killer to die tomorrow

[Tiger Wench]

This case presents a real heartburn for the pinko commie anti-death penalty libs.  They oppose capital punishment, but in this instance, the crime committed was a major hate crime by a white person against a black person. Which white liberal guilt trumps?  Note the highlighted text below - even the anti-death penalty zealots can't find anything nice to say about this guy, and they are not putting a lot of resources into helping him out.  No redeeming qualities. 

They probably realize their overall fundraising efforts would be hampered by trying to save a white guy who committed a nationally notorious hate crime.  Yet it's ok to try and save other absolute scum bags whose crimes were only devastating to the victim's family and never made the front page of the NYT.  I am guessing they make a token protest tomorrow, but will be glancing at their watches and planning what they are gonna fix their kids for dinner.

Idiots.

His crime shocked the nation, but execution below radar
By ALLAN TURNER, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Published 08:15 p.m., Monday, September 19, 2011

Working only sporadically, the hands of the clock atop Texas' 19th century Huntsville death house are an uncertain indicator of the hour. For the hundreds of killers whose lives end in the red brick building, though, the faulty timepiece's message still is clear: Time is up.

With four executions scheduled in two weeks, September is the execution chamber's busiest month since May 2010. And, in each instance, a cadre of death penalty opponents - bullhorn and placards in hand - gathers to decry what it considers the supreme barbaric act.

They will travel to Huntsville Wednesday for the execution of North Texas small-time hoodlum-turned-killer Lawrence Russell Brewer. Coming after the high-profile, initially successful campaign to stay last Thursday's scheduled execution of Houston double-killer Duane Buck, Brewer's death may seem anticlimactic.

"If we hadn't had four cases in nine days, we would have focused more on this case," said Gloria Rubac, of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement. "Most of our members work full-time. We do what we can. But, my God, we have so many executions we don't do anything but go up to Huntsville to protest."

In reality, Brewer's is the only September execution likely to make the history books.

Not much empathy

Brewer, 44, will die for his role in the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr., an African-American who was dragged two miles down a lonely Jasper County road in a crime that shocked and sickened the nation.

Unlike Buck's case, in which Texas Defender Service lawyers filed a barrage of appeals and held news conferences with a surviving victim who urged the killer's life be spared, Brewer's presents few legal options or grounds for empathy.

"He is not a sympathetic person," Rubac conceded.

Kristin Hule, president of the Texas Coalition to End the Death Penalty, said that while her group's members "unconditionally oppose all executions," her Austin-based organization must "as a matter of resources and capacity focus on the case that's right in front of us," referring to two cases with execution dates before Brewer's.

Added the group's founder, David Atwood of Houston, "I think Brewer's case is a little under the radar screen. I don't think many people, the attorneys, did anything. A lot of people haven't realized who Lawrence Brewer is."

Brewer, Hule said, ordered that no clemency petition be filed with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Alex Calhoun, an Austin lawyer who represented Brewer in unsuccessful federal appeals, said the killer has exhausted his appeals. Further, he said, Brewer, irate over perceived inadequacy of his early legal counsel, became uncooperative with later lawyers.

No contrition

Law enforcement officials who recently visited Brewer on death row said he expressed no contrition for the Byrd murder.

Brewer was one of two Byrd murder suspects sentenced to die. The other, John William King, remains on death row. A third, Shawn Allen Berry, was sentenced to life in prison.

On June 7, 1998, the trio grabbed Byrd, who was walking along a local road, beat him, then attached log chains to his ankles and dragged him about two miles behind a pickup. Byrd was decapitated when he struck a culvert.

The killers dumped Byrd's body at a Jasper County cemetery, then went to a barbecue. Brewer's DNA was found on a cigarette and beer bottle at the crime scene. Byrd's blood was found on his shoe.

Brewer and King, who met in prison, were avowed white supremacists.

The nation recoiled from the murder's savagery, and the killing led to passage of state and federal hate crimes legislation.

'The world hates him'

Long before the fatal summer in Jasper County, Brewer, who grew up in North Texas near Sulphur Springs, impressed those who knew him as a feckless, if not malevolent, character.

"I never thought his chance of becoming a productive citizen was too bright," former Delta County sheriff's investigator Gary Thompson said shortly after Brewer's arrest. Brewer was known to swill beer with his friends atop the town water tower and to burglarize the homes of his relatives.

"It's a hard case because of what happened was so horrible," Rubac said. "He knows the world hates him."

[GH2001]

Fuck those hippies.

They are fighting a lost cause in states like Tx, Ga, AL, etc.

An eye for an eye bitch.

[GarMan]

The nation recoiled from the murder's savagery, and the killing led to passage of state and federal hate crimes legislation.

This part of the whole morbid story absolutely infuriates me.  What the fuck is a "hate crime"?  Ridiculous... 

[Tiger Wench]

This part of the whole morbid story absolutely infuriates me.  What the fuck is a "hate crime"?  Ridiculous... 

To be honest I have no problem with escalating the charges or punishment for a crime if the sole and whole reason for the crime was based on the other person's status - race, gender, orientation - like waiting for a gay man to come out of a bar and attacking him for no reason other than he is gay.  If he gets mugged randomly on the street by people who did not know he was gay - not a hate crime.  My problem with it is that the unwritten law says that only a crime against a member of a protected class is considered a hate crime - when to me, a black gang beating up a white man in a riot in LA is as much of a hate crime as the Byrd killing.  ANY purely racially motivated crime - black on white or hispanic or any variation thereof - is a hate crime.  But crimes against whites are never escalated to a hate crime. Only crimes BY whites.  Like only whites can be racist...

[AU_Tiger_2000]

Like only whites can be racist...

It's one of the privileges of being a honky.

[GarMan]

To be honest I have no problem with escalating the charges or punishment for a crime if the sole and whole reason for the crime was based on the other person's status - race, gender, orientation - like waiting for a gay man to come out of a bar and attacking him for no reason other than he is gay.  If he gets mugged randomly on the street by people who did not know he was gay - not a hate crime.  My problem with it is that the unwritten law says that only a crime against a member of a protected class is considered a hate crime - when to me, a black gang beating up a white man in a riot in LA is as much of a hate crime as the Byrd killing.  ANY purely racially motivated crime - black on white or hispanic or any variation thereof - is a hate crime.  But crimes against whites are never escalated to a hate crime. Only crimes BY whites.  Like only whites can be racist...

Do the motivations behind a thug's commssion of a criminal act really matter?  Do those motivations make the criminal act any worse or any less?  More to the point...  Would the rape and murder of one of your daughters by a sick individual be any less of a crime than the rape and murder of an African-American woman by a racist bigot?  I don't buy into that. 

[GH2001]

It's one of the privileges of being a honky.

Damn cracker ass.

[GarMan]

Damn cracker ass.

Ain't that always the way?

[AWK]

To be honest I have no problem with escalating the charges or punishment for a crime if the sole and whole reason for the crime was based on the other person's status - race, gender, orientation - like waiting for a gay man to come out of a bar and attacking him for no reason other than he is gay.  If he gets mugged randomly on the street by people who did not know he was gay - not a hate crime.  My problem with it is that the unwritten law says that only a crime against a member of a protected class is considered a hate crime - when to me, a black gang beating up a white man in a riot in LA is as much of a hate crime as the Byrd killing.  ANY purely racially motivated crime - black on white or hispanic or any variation thereof - is a hate crime.  But crimes against whites are never escalated to a hate crime. Only crimes BY whites.  Like only whites can be racist...

Um...  Protected class = Race...  Caucasian = Race....

[GH2001]

Um...  Protected class = Race...  Caucasian = Race....

Except it never happens this way. Hate crimes seem to only be a one way street. But I see what you are saying.

On a side note -the census may say so, but many white people are not caucasian (derived from the causcus mountains near Russia) by ethnicity. Just saying. I think White or Euro-American is a more accurate nomenclature. We dont say Kenyan or Somali to refer to all blacks in the US. This is the equivilant when using Caucasian for whites.

[GarMan]

Except it never happens this way. Hate crimes seem to only be a one way street. But I see what you are saying.

On a side note -the census may say so, but many white people are not caucasian (derived from the causcus mountains near Russia) by ethnicity. Just saying. I think White or Euro-American is a more accurate nomenclature. We dont say Kenyan or Somali to refer to all blacks in the US. This is the equivilant when using Caucasian for whites.

Racist...

[Tiger Wench]

Um...  Protected class = Race...  Caucasian = Race....

But a black cop calling a white guy a cracker is not a racist statement.  A white cop calling a black man a n***er is.

A guy who rapes and murders a woman for the sake of the rape and murder probably did not select her because of her race.  (And usually serial rapists/killers commit crimes within their own race.) 

No, motivation does not make the crime any worse in terms of the actual outcome.  But if the motivation adds an extra layer to the punishment with additional sentencing guidelines, then I am all for it - AS LONG AS IT IS APPLIED EQUALLY. 

In Texas, that white trash probably would not have gotten death for killing James Byrd after a fight outside a bar, or in the commisson of a robbery, regardless of the race of either guy.  He would have gotten life without parole at best, or probably even 40+ years.  Happens all the time.  Straight murder in Texas does not get you capital punishment.

But he and his water headed accomplices went out that night looking for a black man to kill.  Their motivation for the crime was solely the race of the victim.  As a result, after tomorrow, this guy will no longer be wasting my oxygen.  In that instance, the death penalty was more than warranted.

But I seriously question if it would be called a hate crime for a group of black guys to go out looking for a white guy to kill.  That is the beef I have with it.  It is a one way street. 

[GarMan]

No, motivation does not make the crime any worse in terms of the actual outcome.  But if the motivation adds an extra layer to the punishment with additional sentencing guidelines, then I am all for it - AS LONG AS IT IS APPLIED EQUALLY. 

Nonsense...  Why don't we just revisit and adjust the sentencing guidelines for all crimes and stop this silly thought-police garbage?  Unpopular thought, no matter how despicable does not justify additional sentencing, not to mention the first amendment issues... 

[GH2001]

But a black cop calling a white guy a cracker is not a racist statement.  A white cop calling a black man a n***er is.

A guy who rapes and murders a woman for the sake of the rape and murder probably did not select her because of her race.  (And usually serial rapists/killers commit crimes within their own race.) 

No, motivation does not make the crime any worse in terms of the actual outcome.  But if the motivation adds an extra layer to the punishment with additional sentencing guidelines, then I am all for it - AS LONG AS IT IS APPLIED EQUALLY. 

In Texas, that white trash probably would not have gotten death for killing James Byrd after a fight outside a bar, or in the commisson of a robbery, regardless of the race of either guy.  He would have gotten life without parole at best, or probably even 40+ years.  Happens all the time.  Straight murder in Texas does not get you capital punishment.

But he and his water headed accomplices went out that night looking for a black man to kill.  Their motivation for the crime was solely the race of the victim.  As a result, after tomorrow, this guy will no longer be wasting my oxygen.  In that instance, the death penalty was more than warranted.

But I seriously question if it would be called a hate crime for a group of black guys to go out looking for a white guy to kill.  That is the beef I have with it.  It is a one way street.

You spelled cracker in its entirety but *'ed out the N word.

Racist.

[Tiger Wench]

You spelled cracker in its entirety but *'ed out the N word.

Racist.

GF is the racist - had I not taken the initiative, the filter would have screened it out anyway.

[GH2001]

GF is the racist - had I not taken the initiative, the filter would have screened it out anyway.

I know were funning and all, but the fact that we naturally bleep that word (n word) out but openly say honky, cracker, wop, etc - kind of proves your point.

[Tiger Wench]

Nonsense...  Why don't we just revisit and adjust the sentencing guidelines for all crimes and stop this silly thought-police garbage?  Unpopular thought, no matter how despicable does not justify additional sentencing, not to mention the first amendment issues...

Because sometimes intent matters.  Not all murder deserves death - justice can be served simply by separation from society.  One crackhead of one race killing another crackhead of a different race in a fight over drugs is a lot different than some asshole saying "Hey, Billy Bob (or Q'uantrique or Jose), I know what - let's go find us a black/white/hispanic/homo guy tonight and beat him to death. Sounds like fun!"  The crackhead deserves to go to prison.  The other deserves death.   Without the hate crime legislation, both crimes are treated equally, and in my opinion, they are not.

[Tiger Wench]

I know were funning and all, but the fact that we naturally bleep that word (n word) out but openly say honky, cracker, wop, etc - kind of proves your point.

Yeah, it occurred to me when I typed that post and didn't ** the n-word at first, but then went back and did it, that a huge double standard exists, you silly fag.

[GarMan]

Because sometimes intent matters.  Not all murder deserves death - justice can be served simply by separation from society.  One crackhead of one race killing another crackhead of a different race in a fight over drugs is a lot different than some asshole saying "Hey, Billy Bob (or Q'uantrique or Jose), I know what - let's go find us a black/white/hispanic/homo guy tonight and beat him to death. Sounds like fun!"  The crackhead deserves to go to prison.  The other deserves death.   Without the hate crime legislation, both crimes are treated equally, and in my opinion, they are not. 

If both are convicted of first degree murder, both deserve death from my perspective.  I'll defer to the legal experts, but intent is often considered during sentencing.  We don't need another layer of thought-legislation to unnecessarily complicate our legal system.  It's just a silly concept, not to mention risky from a Constitutional perspective.

[Vandy Vol]

My opinion?

None of you asked for it, but as usual, I like to give it.  Go suck on your mother's teat if you don't like it.

If you decide that you're going to kill someone because of their race, then you're a mouth breathing retard.

Not in the literal sense, but in a figurative sense that I would hope most of you can imagine.

The same goes if you're going to kill someone because they're white, because they're female, because they're a ginger, or because they're a paraplegic.

I don't necessarily support the idea of "hate crimes" as they've been presented in recent legislation, but if you're going to kill someone because they are X?  Go fuck yourself.  You deserve the death penalty, or at least a life sentence, because otherwise, you're going to kill more people simply because they are X.  We don't need you in our society.

Unless, of course, the killing of people who are classified as  "X" is necessary.  Cue "The Boondock Saints."  Because that shit is awesome.