[The Pack Knight]

Davis was not the only U.S. inmate put to death Wednesday evening. In Texas, white supremacist gang member Lawrence Russell Brewer was put to death for the 1998 dragging death of a black man, James Byrd Jr., one of the most notorious hate crime murders in recent U.S. history.

It's a shame there was no Texas hate crime law on the books at the time so that Brewer could have received a harsher sentence.

[Impala64ssa]

Brewer got what he deserved also, but did Amnesty Int’l have any petitions on his behalf?

[politicalmerc]

I personally think they should have drug him from Dallas to Brownsville and then executed what was left.

[apoliticalone]

It's a shame there was no Texas hate crime law on the books at the time so that Brewer could have received a harsher sentence.

His crime deserved what he got.

That said, hate crime laws represent an insidious example of policies that promote a grossly un-American activity of unequal justice. It incentivizes law enforcement and the Justice Depts to investigate and prosecute more vigorously crimes against certain selected groups of people and less vigorously against others. Typically if one is prosecuted for a hate crime the media will tend to pressure the system to find guilt instead of innocence. America can thank the ADL and SPLC and many in Congress for the travesty of making justice special for some, and less special for others.

[dfwgator]

It's a shame there was no Texas hate crime law on the books at the time so that Brewer could have received a harsher sentence.

Maybe they could have left out using the sodium thiopental, so the prisoner would suffer more.