James Byrd Murderer's Appeal Denied

James Byrd Murderer’s Appeal Denied

A convicted murderer/white supremacist will remain behind bars and have his day of reckoning. John William King lost his final appeal this week for the 1998 murder of James Byrd.

According to ABC 13 King argued that his lawyers “insufficiently” presented his case that resulted in a death penalty sentencing.

The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals shot that down, however, and King will remain on death row.

In June 1998 King and two other white men, Lawrence Russell Brewer and Shawn Allen Berry, took 49-year-old James Byrd to a secluded location where they beat him, chained him by his ankles to the back of a pickup truck, and killed him as they dragged him more than three miles and left parts of his decapitated and dismembered body on the roadway.

The murder was ruled a hate crime.

Brewer was executed in 2011 for his part and Berry is currently serving a life sentence.

Good riddance.