3rd Dragging Death Trial to Begin

Jury selection began for the last of three white men arrested in the dragging death of a black man in Jasper, Texas. Shawn Allen Berry, 24, is hoping to avoid the fate of his two white supremacist co-defendants, John William King and Lawrence Russell Brewer. They were convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for the June 1998 slaying of James Byrd Jr., 49, who was chained to a pickup and dragged nearly three miles. Berry’s attorney told 132 potential jurors, 19 of them black, that Berry is not a racist, had no motive and did not commit the crime. The prosecutor said Berry has given differing versions of the crime.