Lawrence Russell Brewer was one of three white men who kidnapped and brutally murdered James Byrd Jr., a 49‑year‑old Black man, in Jasper, Texas, on June 7, 1998. He was a white supremacist and was later executed in Texas for his role in this racially motivated killing.
What he did
Brewer, along with John William King and Shawn Allen Berry, offered James Byrd Jr. a ride in a pickup truck, then drove him to a remote area instead of taking him home. There, they beat and tortured Byrd, chained him by the ankles to the back of the truck with a logging chain, and dragged him along a rural road until his body was decapitated and dismembered.
Motive and background
Brewer and King were identified as white supremacists who had been involved with racist prison gangs and Ku Klux Klan–affiliated groups. Evidence and later reporting described the killing as a hate crime intended, in part, to signal or serve a racist agenda, making it one of the most notorious race‑motivated murders in the United States after the civil rights era.
Legal outcome
Brewer was tried for capital murder, convicted in 1999, and sentenced to death. He spent years on death row and was executed by lethal injection in Texas on September 21, 2011, while his two accomplices received separate sentences (one also sentenced to death and the other to life in prison).