Grisly Death of Dragging Victim Detailed

Dragged along a bumpy road by a chain around his ankles, James Byrd Jr. desperately shifted from side to side to ease the excruciating pain and was alive until his head was torn off by a concrete drainage duct, a pathologist testified Monday.

Dr. Tommy Brown took the stand at the trial of John William King, one of the three white men accused of killing Byrd in June because he was black.

Prosecutors, who wrapped up their case after 43 witnesses, need to show Byrd was alive when he was dragged to prove kidnapping and murder, which together would expose the white supremacist to the death penalty.

“It’s my opinion, while being dragged, Mr. Byrd was conscious and was attempting to relieve the pain and injuries he was receiving,” said Brown, who said Byrd’s heels were ground to the bone.

“I think we all know how much brush burn abrasions, like if you fall and slide on a surface with your hands--that’s very painful--and this would have been very painful to him. He would probably swap one portion of his body for the other, trying to get relief as he was being dragged.”

Brown said Byrd’s fatal wound occurred about two miles into the grisly journey in the early morning hours of June 7 when his head slammed into a concrete slab covering the gutter at the foot of a driveway.

The pathologist said there was no way to determine whether Byrd was still conscious when his head hit the culvert.

King’s father and a female relative left the courtroom before the pathologist testified. Some family members who stayed cried.

Hours later, the defense rested after calling three witnesses who testified for less than a hour. King did not take the stand. Closing arguments are scheduled for today.

The defense witnesses included a convicted burglar and sexual offender, John Mosley, who made some of the tattoos on King’s body that prosecutors say are evidence of his seething racial hatred. Mosley said the tattoos “looked cool, that’s all.”

Also Monday, a Jasper County jail administrator, Mo Johnson, said authorities intercepted a letter written by King and intended to be smuggled to one of his alleged accomplices, Lawrence Brewer, in which he expressed pride in the crime and said he realizes he might have to die for it.

“Regardless of the outcome of this, we have made history,” King wrote, signing the note with a KKK symbol and a Nazi salute.