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Friday, Nov 27, 2009
As the trial of the last defendant in the dragging death of James Byrd gets under way, these Texas residents are kidding themselves if they think they've conquered racism.
Oct 25, 1999 | As Shawn Berry goes to trial Monday for his alleged role in the brutal 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr., Jasper residents, both black and white, remain united behind a single myth.
The myth of Jasper is this: Byrd's murder notwithstanding, the town is racially harmonious. Blacks and whites coexist not just peacefully, but untainted by the prejudice the national media has charged Jasper's residents with. In fact, the races do more than coexist peacefully. Whites, instead of being the oppressors, are presided over by a black power elite, including a black mayor, R.C. Horn. Or as one old white man, a former high school teacher, put it, "I don't know what people are talking about when they say we're racist. We turned this town over to the niggers to run years ago."
Byrd was killed June 7, 1998, when three men, Lawrence Brewer, Bill King and Shawn Berry, chained him to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him three miles down the road. Byrd was black; his three killers -- whose guilt was never really in doubt -- were white.
Berry is the last of three defendants to be tried for the Byrd's murder. Jury selection starts Sept. 25. The two other men arrested for Byrd's murder, King and Berry, have been convicted and sentenced to death. But even if Berry, a Jasper native, is found guilty, whether or not he gets the death sentence remains up for grabs -- not least because his sins, although extreme, are those of the community where he was raised.
"It'll be interesting," says one investigator who was on the scene shortly after Byrd's body was discovered. "I think there's probably enough evidence for him to get the death penalty. He probably ought to get it. But I'm not sure he will."
Here's the thumbnail version of what happened on that June night when the shit hit the fan, putting Berry and his cohorts in jail and drawing swarms of journalists to an unwelcoming Jasper: Byrd, a local black Jasper resident, got so drunk at a party that his friends and relatives refused to drive him home. So he walked. When three white men, Berry, Brewer and King, offered him a ride in Berry's primer-gray pickup, he apparently jumped right in. What happened next is hazy, but the four men didn't go home. Instead, they started swilling beer together and smoking cigarettes.
Eventually, some combination of Berry, Brewer and King tired of the camaraderie and decided to chain their newfound companion to the back of their pickup and drag him down a county road. Finally, Byrd's head hit a culvert and split, along with one arm, from the rest of his body. Brewer, Berry and King unchained the body and left it outside the gates of a local graveyard, then went their separate ways.
Byrd's buttocks and heels were ground down almost to the bone. He was alive and probably conscious until his head hit the culvert. His last moments couldn't have been anything short of excruciating. Berry says he was a horrified bystander, not an active participant. He says the other men threatened him, saying "the same thing can happen to a nigger lover." He says he pissed his pants. Anyone would have. Berry says he's sorry. The pants will be entered into evidence.
In Jasper, people look at what happened to James Byrd and, because it's so horribly beyond comprehension, easily separate themselves from it. The thinking goes like this: How could anyone -- much less three people -- drink with a man, then chain him to the back of a truck and drag him down the road until his head is torn off? The only answer that has so far sufficed is that the perpetrators calculated the crime to impress a white supremacist group -- to prove their loyalty and worthiness, as it were. It was a hate crime, pure and simple. An act of evil.
Brewer and King were both easy to throw onto the trash heap of haters. Both had racist tattoos and open ties with a white supremacist group. While they were in jail in Jasper County, Brewer sent King a note proudly boasting that after Byrd's death, "we are bigger stars, or should I say hero of the day, than we ever expected." In other words, it was easy for Jasper residents, black and white, to look at King and Brewer and say, "No. That's not us." Shawn Berry is different.
