Racist Guilty of Murder in Texas Dragging Death

A jury of 11 whites and one black found white supremacist John William King guilty of capital murder Tuesday for chaining a black man by his ankles and dragging him behind a truck until his head was ripped off on a deserted road outside this east Texas town.

The crime, a throwback to racial crimes earlier this century in the South, sparked international repulsion and soul-searching in Jasper, a town of 8,000.

Jurors, who chose the one black man among them to be their foreman, took less than 2 1/2 hours to deliver their verdict against King, who now faces possible execution. Shortly after they submitted their decision, the jurors plunged into the punishment phase of the case, which is expected to last another two days.

The 24-year-old King--sitting immobile and wearing a loose, white turtleneck that covered tattoos such as Nazi SS symbols--leaned forward after the announcement in an apparent attempt to avoid courtroom television cameras.

Several members of the family of victim James Byrd Jr. broke into tears. So did King’s father, Ronald. In past days, family members have left the courtroom weeping or ill because of grisly evidence of his death.

As the verdict was read, those in the crowded visitors’ section listened silently. Then a black man raised his hands and clapped slowly, twice. Subdued applause broke out throughout the spectator section of the courtroom and two people said simply: “Yes.”

State District Judge Joe Bob Golden called for quiet.

Outside the court, Mary Verrett, Byrd’s sister, said: “We win. And yet we still lose because we don’t have him back.”

Added Byrd’s son, Ross: “All I know is that there’s one [defendant] down and two to go.”

King, an unemployed laborer, is one of three white men accused in Byrd’s killing in the early hours of June 7, 1998. Shawn Berry, 24, and Russell Brewer, 31, will be tried separately at dates to be set later.

A video shot by prosecutors after the crime followed an irregular trail marked by the victim’s blood along the dirt road taken by the pickup truck for nearly three miles to the spot where Byrd’s head and a shoulder were ripped away when the victim slammed against a concrete culvert.

During the first two miles of his ordeal, Byrd was alive, conscious and desperately shifting his body to alleviate the pain as he was dragged by the truck, a pathologist told the court Monday.

Likening King and his alleged companions to “three robed riders coming straight out of hell,” prosecutor Pat Hardy said in his closing arguments Tuesday that the three wanted “to show their defiance to God, to show their defiance of Christianity and everything most people in this county stand for” when they dumped the body in front of a black church and cemetery.

King, whom investigators linked to the crime with DNA evidence and personal effects, including a cigarette lighter, had maintained his innocence and in a letter to the Dallas Morning News suggested that his companions had committed the crime after a drug deal went bad.

But the defendant, a prolific letter writer, incriminated himself in notes to other inmates, including Brewer, and to the newspaper. Even King’s own tattooed skin was cited by prosecutors as evidence of hatred of blacks.

In one note to Brewer, King discussed bloodstained clothing still in his apartment and not yet found by police. And in his letter to the newspaper, King admitted that he had been riding in the truck with Brewer and Berry that evening.

That admission was important because there were no eyewitnesses to place King in the truck. One eyewitness saw three men in a truck with the victim but could not identify them. Some of King’s letters also were written with bravado. For example, he wrote to Brewer: “Regardless of the outcome of this, we have made history and shall die proudly remembered if need be.”

Jasper County Dist. Atty. Guy James Gray portrayed King as a hate-riddled racist who murdered Byrd as a “dramatic” publicity gesture for a Ku Klux Klan group that he was trying to start in Jasper. The murder was deliberate and not the product of a “bunch of drunks on a Saturday night,” Gray told the court Tuesday.

During the trial, prosecutors have said that King, Brewer and Berry, all ex-convicts, spent the evening drinking, then picked up the 49-year-old Byrd as he walked home after a party. They took him to a clearing where a struggle ensued, then shackled Byrd’s ankles with a heavy logging chain, attached it their truck and dragged him down Huff Creek Road, prosecutors said.

The three may have offered Byrd a cigarette, perhaps as a last request, before dragging him to his death, prosecutors said.

Byrd was restrained against his will, while conscious, prosecutors said, a point that is important because a murder in conjunction with a second crime, in this case kidnapping, could merit the death penalty.

During his closing statement, Brack Jones, one of King’s attorneys, tried to cast doubt that Byrd had been kidnapped, arguing that the 24 1/2-foot logging chain was a tool for murder--and not abduction.

Haden “Sonny” Cribbs, another King lawyer, reminded jurors that the hateful images and words inked on his client’s body and scattered throughout his letters, although loathsome, were not evidence of King’s actions. The defense contended during the trial that racist tattoos coating King’s torso and arms were meant to fend off attacks from African American inmates while he was in jail for burglary.

“Having a pentagram doesn’t mean you go out and commit murder,” Cribbs said, referring to the star etched on King’s skull and recently obscured by his hair.

“Having a hanging black man on your arms doesn’t mean you go out and kill a black man. . . . He’s proud of his tattoos,” Cribbs declared. “That’s his right. Whether I agree or you agree, that’s his right.”

But Gray described the tattoos and writings as symptoms of a virulent hate that would kill Byrd--and could infect the rest of Jasper.

After the verdict, one of King’s lawyers said that his client was not surprised by the outcome and saw himself the victim of conspiracy.

A statement issued on behalf of the defendant’s father, Ronald King, after the verdict said that the elder King “loves his son as hopefully any father should” and “he prays that no family should ever experience prejudice of any sort ever again. . . . Mr. King reaches out to the Jasper community, to continue to show the world by its example that, during these difficult times, good will will overcome all evil, with our trust in and with the help of God.”

Jasper Mayor R. C. Horn, who is African American, said: “I knew justice would be served. Thank God.”

Jasper real estate agent John Matthews, who is white and has watched the courthouse hubbub with his dog, Domino, from his office across the square, said that he and many other residents were relieved.

“Jasper is not a bad town. It’s got good people, and was just unfortunate enough to have disreputable people come in and put it in a bad light,” he said.

But 29-year-old Melissa Adams, an African American mother of two who has seen King entering or leaving the courthouse during the trial, said:

“I want to see the expression on King’s face. He came out here every day smiling. I want to see if he’s smiling now.”