Where are the folks trying to save Brewer? What is the difference?
Posted on 09/20/2011 9:07:13 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Beneath the guard towers and behind the razor wire of a Texas prison, Lawrence Brewer lifts his arm to display his racist tattoos.
“Like a cross burning and an intertwined KKK,” he explains, showing off the images cut into his flesh that turned his body into a billboard for hate.
His worldview of racial relations came from an earlier stint in prison.
“Watching the blacks and the Mexicans and other races literally beat people near death. So I came out after four years of that, with that mentality,” he said. What he did after he came out of prison made him one of the nation’s most notorious killers. And on Wednesday night, he’s scheduled to die.
Along a lonely country road in East Texas, something horrible happened. And yet, the man who’s facing execution for the crime still says he didn’t commit murder, and that he was just going along with friends for a ride. He said that he wouldn’t do anything differently. “As far as any regrets, no, I have no regrets,” Brewer says. “No, I’d do it all over again, to tell you the truth.”
The savage killing of James Byrd Jr shook the conscience of the nation, reviving America’s nightmarish legacy of lynching and racially motivated violence. One hot night in June 1998, a trio of young men driving along a country road near Jasper offered Byrd a ride. Instead, they beat him, chained his ankles to the back of their pick-up truck and dragged him for more than two miles.
Byrd tried to prop himself up by his elbows, but they were sheared to the bone. As the driver swerved from side to side to bounce Byrd across the road, the asphalt tore away parts of his body. His agony ended when he slammed into a culvert and he was beheaded.
His killers left what was left of his torso alongside the road near a cemetery. Then they drove home and went to bed.
Deputies quickly arrested Brewer, John William King and Shawn Berry and charged them with capital murder. And the quiet town of Jasper suddenly was besieged by everyone from FBI agents to news reporters to race-baiting protesters.
All three of the killers were convicted in separate trials. King, a belligerent ex-con who wrote rambling essays about inciting racial warfare, was considered the leader of the murderous pack; he was sentenced to die. So was Brewer, another ex-con who covered his body with ghastly, racist tattoos. Berry, whom even prosecutors admitted was not a racist, escaped the executioner’s needle and was sentenced to life in prison.
Now, Brewer becomes the first to face execution on Wednesday evening. He still asserts his innocence, repeating his story that he looked out of the pick-up truck’s back window and watched Berry cut Byrd’s throat. “That’s all I could see, whenever I looked out the sliding glass window in the truck, was Sean bending over at a pair of ankles,” he said.
But his alibi falls apart when compared to the physical evidence, according to Billy Rowles, the retired sheriff who investigated the murder.
“There was absolutely no throat cut,” Rowles said. “Wasn’t even scratches on the throat where a knife had done it.”
Oddly enough, as his hours on death row tick to a close, Brewer says he supports the death penalty. Even though he asserts his innocence, he claims he’s ready for his case to finally come to a close.
“Some days I’m wishing for a date to come and some days I’m not wishing for a date,” he says. “So now that it’s here, I’m willing to accept it, you know. That’s my punishment.”
Byrd’s sister is willing to accept it, too. Betty Boatner speaks with a voice bathed in peace and contentment. Her mother has died, her father has Alzheimer’s disease, but she still talks about her family’s blessings. And she bears no malice toward Brewer.
“If I saw him face to face, I’d tell him I forgive him for what he did,” Boatner said. “Otherwise I’d be like him. I have already forgiven him.”
Still, the sheriff who led the investigation into the murder and helped keep the peace in his southeast Texas town can’t help but wonder about Brewer’s state of mind on death row.
“In all the time he sat in that cement cage, that he’s been in there, in all the time that he’s had to think. I just cannot believe there’s not some kind of remorse,” Rowles says.
They have forgiven the killers and want their lives spared. The survivors are actually remarkable people.
Me...dragging them behind a pick-up truck on the hot Texas summer asphalt sounds about right...
I can believe it. Fry him. The sooner, the better
Death penalty opponents aren't opponents of the death penalty.. just like anti war protesters aren't opponents of war or global warming isn't about the warming of the globe. Any namesake liberal cause is simply the cover for a hidden leftwing agenda. In the case of the death penalty, it's simply about being anti white, anti Christian, anti male and/or anti American, depending on the specifics of the case.
That's the least of what this guy deserves.
Something else I remember is how the subhumans in the lamestream media descended on the town of Jasper and tried to stir up racial strife.
********************************
Beaufort SC had the same problem in 1907 when they had a devastating fire.
The resolution of Mr. F. H. Christensen, as follows, was then unanimously adopted.
Resolved, That the Secretary of this meeting communicate with the Savannah Morning News, condemning in unmeasured terms the article contained in that newspaper of the 21st instant.
The following is the communication of the secretary:
Beaufort, S. C., Jan. 21 — A mass meeting of prominent white and colored citizens of Beaufort, S. C., hereby express their unqualified condemnation of your report published in the Morning News of January 21, headed “Troops Sent in to Beaufort to Hold Negroes in Check”. The implication that the two races did not work in harmony for the preservation of life and property or that there was at any time during the fire friction or ill feeling between them is a gross injustice to this community.
S. H. Rodgers,
Chairman.
R. R. Legare,
Secretary.
*”Where the carcass is the ravens will gather.” It was the would-be ravens who started the dissatisfaction as to the guard. The better people have little to say.
*Another visitation of the Savannah Photographer would be a calamity just now. He is too “yellow” journalistic for our conservative people. But he was advertising himself, don’t you know.
*We saw no attagonism (sic) between the two races. The would-be looters had disappointment lines in their faces.
*Considering their losses, our people show wonderful nerve, especially the women.
http://www.beaufortcountylibrary.org/htdocs-sirsi/fireof.htm#Resolved
Bump to the top.
Couldn't agree more. I get mad just reading the article. Imagine if this were your son, your brother, or your father.
A conspiratorial silence, just like the Wichita Horror, The Franciscan University killings and the Christian/Newsom murders.
It was Bush’s fault.
How many liberals are going to condemn Perry when he signs off on this particular execution?
This case is a prime example of how the media manipulates. Why and how did this particular case become a national obsession? What black on white murder has the press ever spent so much time on and made the name synonymous with ‘ hatred’ & ‘supremacy’? How about Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom? Or Omar Thornton? There are numerous examples yet the press has never once focused national attention on any of them. Hell they made Omar Thorton a victim and a type of bizarre hero. Wonder why? Of course the media can really only do what whites allow them to do.
Where are the folks trying to save Brewer? What is the difference?
Wow, that is awesome. Great find.
Mike Farrell will be there protesting his execution,right?
Hate because of skin color is like not like brown F150’s. Or blue F150’s. It’s still an F150 underneath - who cares.
Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters, Louis Farrakhan, the congressional Black Caucus, etc. seem to care....
While I agree, THEY care - I do not. It’s idiocy to hate a truck because it’s fire-engine red, or a Corvette because it’s burnt orange, or a Mustang because it’s got pink pinstripes.
It doesn’t matter - it’s superfluous to the vehicle.
Now, some folks are all hung up on “I want a white truck” or a “black car”. They don’t care what it does, just what it looks like.
That’s why Woody Harrelson’s line in White Men Can’t Jump is so right - “You’d rather look good and lose than look bad and win.” Unfortunately, it’s a philosophy that has become more prevalent among the ‘black’ people, in my 41 years experience, anyway.
True. Very true.
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