Jury Selection Opens in Dragging Death

With jury selection underway, Jasper County Dist. Atty. Guy James Gray briefly outlined the details of James Byrd Jr.’s death June 7--dragged behind a pickup, his body left outside a black cemetery “as some form of a message”--as defendant John William King buried his head in his hands at the mention of the death penalty. Gray described how the body, “swinging out right and left like a boat pulling a skier,” slammed into a culvert, decapitating Byrd after he had been dragged several miles. King, 24, an unemployed construction worker and avowed white supremacist, is the first of three men to be tried in Jasper, Texas. He denies killing Byrd, saying Shawn Allen Berry, 23, committed the murder. Berry and Lawrence Russell Brewer, 31, are awaiting trial.