Page 8 of 10 FirstFirst ... 678910 LastLast
Results 71 to 80 of 93

Thread: John William King - Texas Execution - April 24, 2019

  1. #71
    Junior Member Stranger
    Join Date
    Jul 2017
    Posts
    7
    IÂ’m pretty sure this one will go through. Too much public outcry if no other reason

    And won’t it be poetic justice if King struggles while the drugs hit him like can happen at times? Rather than “just going to sleep”?

  2. #72
    Senior Member CnCP Addict TrudieG's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2013
    Posts
    557
    This has got to happen the Byrd family deserves justice for the brutal horrifying way their loved one was murdered.

  3. #73
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2013
    Location
    Newport, United Kingdom
    Posts
    2,454
    Texas execution set for John William King in racist dragging death of James Byrd Jr.

    King and two other white men were convicted in the brutal East Texas murder of Byrd, who was black. King has claimed he's innocent and hopes the U.S. Supreme Court will stop his death

    It’s been more than two decades since an infamous hate crime in East Texas, where three white men were convicted of chaining a black man to the back of a pickup truck, dragging him for miles and then dumping the remains of his body in front of a church.

    On Wednesday evening, John William King, 44, is set to become the second man executed in the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr. Lawrence Brewer was put to death in 2011 for the crime, and Shawn Berry is serving a life sentence.

    King had previously been involved in a white supremacist prison gang, and he is notoriously covered in racist tattoos, including Ku Klux Klan symbols, a swastika and a visual depiction of a lynching, according to court documents. But King maintains that he’s innocent in Byrd’s murder — claiming that Berry dropped him and Brewer off at their shared apartment before Byrd was beaten and dragged to death.

    In a last-minute appeal, King’s attorney argued that a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling entitles his client to a new trial because his original lawyers didn’t assert his claim of innocence to the jury despite King’s insistence. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals narrowly rejected this appeal in a 5-4 ruling Monday, and a petition is now in front of the nation’s high court.

    Byrd’s sister, who watched Brewer’s execution and plans to attend King’s on Wednesday, said she didn’t understand why King’s case has been tied up with numerous appeals. He was sentenced to death in February 1999.

    “He wants to find a way not to die, but he didn’t give James that chance,” said Louvon Harris. “He’s still getting off easy because your body’s not going to be flying behind a pickup truck being pulled apart.”

    Byrd’s brutal murder drew a spotlight on the small town of Jasper and violent racism in the modern world. Evidence at trial showed police found most of the 49-year-old’s body on June 7, 1998, with three miles of blood, drag marks, and other body parts — including his head — on the road behind it. At the beginning of the gruesome trail, police found evidence of a fight, Byrd’s hat and cigarette butts later tied to King, Berry and Brewer, according to court documents. The three men were arrested shortly afterward.

    Though King didn’t give an official statement to police or testify at his trial, he wrote a letter to The Dallas Morning News while awaiting trial proclaiming his innocence, saying Berry knew Byrd from jail and stopped the truck to pick him up after seeing Byrd walking down the road. King told The News that Berry then dropped him and Brewer off before leaving with Byrd alone.

    But in a jail note written to Brewer, he said he didn’t think his clothes police took from their apartment had blood on them, but his sandals may have had a “dark brown substance” on them.

    “Seriously, though, Bro, regardless of the outcome of this, we have made history and shall die proudly remembered if need be…. Much Aryan love, respect, and honor, my brother in arms,” King wrote, according to a court filing.

    Still, King maintained before and through his trial that he wanted to argue for his innocence and unsuccessfully complained to the court when he said his attorneys refused, his current lawyer, Richard Ellis, said in his latest appeals. King is claiming that because his attorneys instead conceded his guilt in the murder, a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling should allow him to get a new trial.

    In Robert McCoy’s case out of Louisiana, the high court held last year that a defendant has the right to choose the objective of his defense — so trial lawyers can’t concede guilt if the defendant wants to assert innocence. King said his lawyers didn’t assert his innocence, instead largely focusing on whether the murder could be considered death penalty eligible.

    The Jasper County District Attorney’s Office knocked the appeal, saying in a brief that King pleaded not guilty and his lawyers, unlike McCoy’s, didn’t concede guilt but were “substantially limited” based on the given physical evidence, his letter to The News and his jail note to Brewer.

    “Counsel could not create evidence where none was available, and counsel’s failure to manufacture exculpatory evidence where none existed is not equivalent to a ‘concession’ of guilt,” wrote Sue Korioth for the prosecutor’s office.

    The Court of Criminal Appeals tossed King’s appeal Monday without reviewing its claims based on its late timing, but two judges wrote short concurring opinions and four signed on to a dissent. Judge Kevin Yeary agreed with the court’s rejection, arguing there was no indication that McCoy’s ruling would apply retroactively to King’s case. And Judge David Newell said in his opinion that King’s case is different from McCoy’s, and noted that King had already made a similar argument against his lawyers that was recently rejected by the Supreme Court.

    Judge Michael Keasler, however, joined by Judges Barbara Hervey, Bert Richardson and Scott Walker, said he would have stopped the execution, noting that his court has recently been admonished by the high court for unsuccessfully implementing another one of its rulings in the death penalty case of Bobby Moore.

    “In light of this Court’s recent earnest, but ultimately unsuccessful, attempts to implement new Supreme Court precedent in death-penalty cases, and especially in light of the horrible stain this Court’s reputation would suffer if King’s claims of innocence are one day vindicated... I think we ought to take our time and decide this issue unhurriedly,” Keasler wrote.

    King’s lawyer, Ellis, also raised the McCoy case in an appeal shortly before another Texas execution this year, but the courts decided against Billie Coble and he was executed in February. Ellis said Monday that the questions raised from the narrow Texas ruling in King's case could indicate the Supreme Court will step in to clarify its earlier decision.

    If the Supreme Court does not stop King’s execution, Harris said his death will bring her some closure, but she will still have to be involved in Berry’s case as he becomes eligible for parole in 2038. And though some hate crime laws were passed in Byrd’s name after his murder, she still dedicates herself to fight against racism in the country in her brother’s name.

    “As long as there’s still hate in America, we still have a job to do,” said Harris, who serves as the president of The Byrd Foundation for Racial Healing.

    https://www.texastribune.org/2019/04...ng-james-byrd/
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

  4. #74
    Member Newbie
    Join Date
    Jul 2018
    Posts
    44
    I honestly cannot see this one being stayed if im honest due to the nature of the crime

  5. #75
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2015
    Location
    Pennsylvania
    Posts
    4,795
    And that right there is an issue that is becoming more and more apparent every year. At this point most of the men(in areas where the DA has to ask for a warrant) are getting executed only because they are high profile political points. Once an area runs out of them, nobody will get executed from there again.
    Last edited by Mike; 04-24-2019 at 12:14 PM.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  6. #76
    Senior Member CnCP Addict TrudieG's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2013
    Posts
    557
    I wonder if he is cursing his friend Brewer at this point while sitting in the death house?. If they meet up in hell King will probably curse Brewer out because he didn't get to pick a last meal since Brewer ruined it for the condemned by ordering a lot and then didn't touch it. Hopefully, there is some kind of remorse in him if no good riddance

  7. #77
    Senior Member Frequent Poster NanduDas's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2018
    Location
    California
    Posts
    419
    A few antis on twitter are claiming that King is a changed man, deeply remorseful, and that he has had many black friends in prison. I’m betting that will prove to be an egregious lie tonight.
    "The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer." -Theodore Roosevelt

  8. #78
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2015
    Location
    New Jersey, unfortunately
    Posts
    4,382
    He'll either say nothing or curse out witnesses. The warden who will oversee King's execution is black so I'm betting the latter.
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  9. #79
    Moderator mostlyclassics's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2013
    Location
    Wilmette, IL
    Posts
    627
    Said TxFryEm

    I'm pretty sure this one will go through. Too much public outcry if no other reason

    And won't it be poetic justice if King struggles while the drugs hit him like can happen at times? Rather than "just going to sleep"?
    Oh, man, I sure hope he drifts peacefully off to his Final Slumber!

    Whenever a condemned so much as sneezes on the gurney, all the anti-DP harpies flap around screeching, "Botched execution! Botched execution!" Then there are years of litigation before that state can execute anyone.
    "Sorry for the delay, I got caught in traffic." — Rodney Scott Berget, South Dakota, October 29, 2018 — final words.

  10. #80
    Senior Member Frequent Poster NanduDas's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2018
    Location
    California
    Posts
    419
    Quote Originally Posted by Aaron View Post
    He'll either say nothing or curse out witnesses. The warden who will oversee King's execution is black so I'm betting the latter.
    James Jones apparently took command of the Huntsville Unit in late 2010, so Brewer had to face him too.
    "The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer." -Theodore Roosevelt

Page 8 of 10 FirstFirst ... 678910 LastLast

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •