The paper this morning said he didn't the stuff he'd ordered. Guess the guards at Huntsville ate good yesterday.
TX is really barbarous for executing that poor misunderstood guy, just for dragging a guy to death behind a truck. Yesterday's paper said Brewer had betrayed not a lick of remorse as his death approached.
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His crime shocked the nation, but execution below radar By ALLAN TURNER, HOUSTON CHRONICLE Published 08:15 p.m., Monday, September 19, 2011
Lawrence Russell Brewer PHOTO BY RON JAAP / HC
Working only sporadically, the hands of the clock atop Texas' 19th century Huntsville death house are an uncertain indicator of the hour. For the hundreds of killers whose lives end in the red brick building, though, the faulty timepiece's message still is clear: Time is up.
With four executions scheduled in two weeks, September is the execution chamber's busiest month since May 2010. And, in each instance, a cadre of death penalty opponents - bullhorn and placards in hand - gathers to decry what it considers the supreme barbaric act.
They will travel to Huntsville Wednesday for the execution of North Texas small-time hoodlum-turned-killer Lawrence Russell Brewer. Coming after the high-profile, initially successful campaign to stay last Thursday's scheduled execution of Houston double-killer Duane Buck, Brewer's death may seem anticlimactic.
"If we hadn't had four cases in nine days, we would have focused more on this case," said Gloria Rubac, of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement. "Most of our members work full-time. We do what we can. But, my God, we have so many executions we don't do anything but go up to Huntsville to protest."
In reality, Brewer's is the only September execution likely to make the history books.
Not much empathy
Brewer, 44, will die for his role in the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr., an African-American who was dragged two miles down a lonely Jasper County road in a crime that shocked and sickened the nation.
Unlike Buck's case, in which Texas Defender Service lawyers filed a barrage of appeals and held news conferences with a surviving victim who urged the killer's life be spared, Brewer's presents few legal options or grounds for empathy.
"He is not a sympathetic person," Rubac conceded.
Kristin Hule, president of the Texas Coalition to End the Death Penalty, said that while her group's members "unconditionally oppose all executions," her Austin-based organization must "as a matter of resources and capacity focus on the case that's right in front of us," referring to two cases with execution dates before Brewer's.
Added the group's founder, David Atwood of Houston, "I think Brewer's case is a little under the radar screen. I don't think many people, the attorneys, did anything. A lot of people haven't realized who Lawrence Brewer is."
Brewer, Hule said, ordered that no clemency petition be filed with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
Alex Calhoun, an Austin lawyer who represented Brewer in unsuccessful federal appeals, said the killer has exhausted his appeals. Further, he said, Brewer, irate over perceived inadequacy of his early legal counsel, became uncooperative with later lawyers.
No contrition
Law enforcement officials who recently visited Brewer on death row said he expressed no contrition for the Byrd murder.
Brewer was one of two Byrd murder suspects sentenced to die. The other, John William King, remains on death row. A third, Shawn Allen Berry, was sentenced to life in prison.
On June 7, 1998, the trio grabbed Byrd, who was walking along a local road, beat him, then attached log chains to his ankles and dragged him about two miles behind a pickup. Byrd was decapitated when he struck a culvert.
The killers dumped Byrd's body at a Jasper County cemetery, then went to a barbecue. Brewer's DNA was found on a cigarette and beer bottle at the crime scene. Byrd's blood was found on his shoe.
Brewer and King, who met in prison, were avowed white supremacists.
The nation recoiled from the murder's savagery, and the killing led to passage of state and federal hate crimes legislation.
'The world hates him'
Long before the fatal summer in Jasper County, Brewer, who grew up in North Texas near Sulphur Springs, impressed those who knew him as a feckless, if not malevolent, character.
"I never thought his chance of becoming a productive citizen was too bright," former Delta County sheriff's investigator Gary Thompson said shortly after Brewer's arrest. Brewer was known to swill beer with his friends atop the town water tower and to burglarize the homes of his relatives.
"It's a hard case because of what happened was so horrible," Rubac said. "He knows the world hates him."
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Hate crime killer executed By ALLAN TURNER, HOUSTON CHRONICLE Updated 07:57 a.m., Thursday, September 22, 2011
KILLER'S FAMILY: Lawrence Russell Brewer's parents - Helen and Lawrence Sr. - leave the prison with his brother, John, after witnessing the execution,
Photo: David J. Phillip / Copyright: AP
KILLER'S FAMILY: Lawrence Russell Brewer's parents - Helen and...
Louvon Harris, left, was silent after the execution, and her sister, Clara Taylor, said she was "still processing" the execution.
Photo: David J. Phillip / AP
Louvon Harris, left, was silent after the execution, and her...
Lawrence Brewer did not touch his last meal, prison officials say.
/ Texas Department of Criminal Jus
Lawrence Brewer did not touch his last meal, prison officials...
James Byrd Jr.
HUNTSVILLE - As the sisters of his victim watched solemnly but dry-eyed, Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed Wednesday for the 1998 Jasper dragging murder of James Byrd Jr. - a racially motivated killing that stunned the nation.
He was the first of two Byrd killers scheduled to be put to death. A third killer was sentenced to life in prison.
Brewer, 44, made no final statement before the lethal drugs were started at 6:11 p.m. He was declared dead 10 minutes later.
Brewer, visibly pale, looked toward the witness room occupied by his parents and brother. He did not make eye contact with Byrd's two sisters and niece, who occupied an adjoining witness room.
Tears began to form in his eyes as he breathed heavily and died.
Clara Taylor and Louvon Harris, the victim's sisters, stood silently as the execution took place.
"Tonight we witnessed the next step toward complete justice for James - the execution of Lawrence Brewer for his part in this brutal murder," Taylor said afterward. "Hopefully today we have been reminded that racial hatred and prejudice can lead to tragic consequences for both the victim and his family as well as the perpetrator and his family."
Taylor said she was "still processing" the execution. "Maybe in the midnight hour I'll process it," she said. "It was quick and sobering."
Taylor said she wanted to hear a final statement from the killer, but also was afraid of what he might say. "My understanding is he had no remorse, he was unrepentant," she said. " … It could have gone in any direction."
Brewer's relatives, who wept during the execution, made no public statement.
Shocked the nation
The Byrd killing, occurring in Deep East Texas, the portion of the state most closely tied to the American South and its history of lynching, shocked and sickened the nation. Byrd, 49, was abducted as he walked along a Jasper road, beaten, urinated on and dragged about 2 miles behind a pickup by log chains attached to his ankles.
He was decapitated when his body struck a culvert.
Brewer and his accomplices, John William King and Shawn Allen Berry, dumped their victim's mangled body at an African-American cemetery and went to eat barbecue.
Investigators found Brewer's DNA on a cigarette and beer bottle at the crime scene and Byrd's blood on his shoes. The brutality of the crime fueled efforts to enact state and federal hate crime laws.
Jasper County law officers who recently visited Brewer on death row said he expressed no remorse.
King, like Brewer, was sentenced to die for the crime; Berry was sent to prison for life.
Prison authorities, who - uncertain of the number or nature of protests the execution might spawn - ringed the Walls Unit with extra guards. But raucous protests never developed.
By late afternoon, dozens of demonstrators - including African-American comedian Dick Gregory - assembled in an area near the prison set aside for protests.
"Any state killing is wrong," he said. "If Adolf Hitler were to be executed, I would be here to protest … I believe life in prison is punishment. Execution is revenge."
Among outnumbered capital punishment supporters was Sam Houston State University political science student Josh Ruschenberg, who lofted a sign urging reinstatement of "Ol' Sparky," the state's decommissioned electric chair.
"I've always been for the death penalty," he said. "I think the state should be able to assess the maximum punishment for maximum offenses. The crime they committed was so heinous."
Didn't eat final meal
Prison officials said Brewer, whose appeals were exhausted, appeared to be in good spirits hours before the execution and joked with the prison warden and chaplain.
Brewer ordered - but did not eat - a final meal of two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, a cheese omelet, a large bowl of fried okra, three fajitas, a pint of Blue Bell ice cream, and a pound of barbecue with a half loaf of white bread.
Brewer and King - both members of a white supremacist gang - met at Tennessee Colony's Beto Unit, where Brewer was serving time for burglary and drug possession.
Beaumont Enterprise reporter Heather Nolan contributed to this report. |
