A white supremacist convicted of killing James Byrd Jr. in 1998 by dragging the 49-year-old black man behind a truck in one of the most notorious U. S. hate crimes of modern times was executed in Texas on Wednesday.
A white supremacist convicted of killing James Byrd Jr. in 1998 by dragging the 49-year-old black man behind a truck in one of the most notorious U. S. hate crimes of modern times was executed in Texas on Wednesday.
John William “Bill” King, 44, was put to death by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 7:08 p.m. (0008 GMT Thursday) at the state’s death chamber in Huntsville, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said in a statement.
The department said King wrote a last statement that read: “Capital Punishment: Them without the capital get the punishment.”
King, along with Shawn Berry and Lawrence Brewer, was accused of kidnapping Byrd while he hitchhiked in Jasper, Texas, on June 7,1998.
