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[TX]
White Supremacist Executed for Texas Dragging
FOX 9
/September 21, 2011
White supremacist gang member Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed Wednesday evening for the infamous dragging death slaying of James Byrd Jr., a black man from East Texas.
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on September 22nd, 2011 at 11:47 am
He got an easier death than the one he gave to James Byrd Jr.
on September 22nd, 2011 at 12:12 pm
Any death is sad. Clearly this man was absolutely demonic, but I’m still sad he was killed tied to a bed, injected with poison, with the last thing he felt being his own filth spewing into his pants. I hate all executions, ours especially. Racist pigs like this man need to be locked up until they learn to regret the harm they’ve done, but no more killing.
A racist pig and a probably innocent black man were both arbitrarily killed by the state last night, and I cry for them both. We are one of only 2 “democracies” in the world who still do this. We need to stop.
on September 22nd, 2011 at 12:28 pm
I agree with Dennis. EYE for an Eye would have been better.
on September 22nd, 2011 at 4:00 pm
I mostly disagree with Graham. I find his interpretation of incarceration vs death disturbing. Locking someone up for murder of this degree and circumstance isn’t justification. The price of a human life shouldn’t be considered much to a religion-less government. But I disagree about the injection. This quote “humane” form of execution sound almost as bad as lynching as far as humane goes. As far as jailing goes, offering up some hotel for criminals of this degree goes against everything I stand for. I, the noble tax payer, am disgusted and frankly quite livid at the very idea that I am paying for the care of a person that could take the life of my loved one for being of a certain human classification of race. Compared to lethal injection, I am relieved I would be paying for the needle than the room and key.
on September 22nd, 2011 at 4:45 pm
Justice has been served. Well served.
on September 22nd, 2011 at 6:43 pm
Actually, the state of California did a study, and found that it costs them somewhere in the range of 6 times the cost of life imprisonment to send someone through the trial process and execute them with increasingly expensive chemicals as the rest of the world starts to refuse to make execution drugs. (Barring advocacy of the eradication of the right to trial and appeal), execution is an extremely inefficient use of taxpayer money, compared with the alternatives.
The cost comparison is the single strongest argument to make for abolishing the death penalty. We may disagree on the morality of killing someone, but not on spending more than we have to on a criminal while so many are hungry, our infrastructure is decades out of date, and our health care system is in crisis.
on September 22nd, 2011 at 6:48 pm
oh and my opposition to government taking human life has nothing to do with religion. I’m quite the atheist. I just don’t want a government to have power over life and death matters! More government in our economy, yes. guarantee everyone employment, housing, health care and clean environment, yes. Stop the natural development of oligarchy yes, but I do not feel comfortable with government being able to arbitrarily end someone’s life. Must be the little bit of libertarian beneath the Socialist in me:p
I regard every execution as a tragedy. If we invested some of the money we spend on prisons, frequently unfair trials, and costly poison, we could stop a lot of crimes before they start.
End the death penalty. End poverty. We’ll all be better off.
on September 23rd, 2011 at 11:50 pm
Troy Davis should’ve been given another chance to prove his innocence, I will always feel that Troy Davis was innocent. No DNA or weapon and only one witness.
Lawrence Russell Brewer was proven guilty via DNA and witnesses. Brewer’ decision to murder James Byrd Jr. in this gruesome and horrific manner were himself and his associates.
Many people are brought up in poverty and never commit any crime at all. However, when poverty, drugs, and hate are combined, even wealthy people have been known to commit crimes, even hate crimes.
on October 2nd, 2011 at 3:29 pm
I agree with you on this, Rex. Some weathly folks are quite racist, whether they actively display those traits and tendencies or not.
As far as the death penalty goes, a lot of money would be saved if the automatic appeal process was removed. I’m not talking about an appeal on the merits of the case, I’m talking about the automatic appeal they get when the death penalty is involved.
Assemble a firing squad, give one guy the real bullet and shoot. Very, very few people out there are capable of forgiving a person who tortured or killed someone they love/loved.
on October 2nd, 2011 at 11:10 pm
It sounds simple when you put it that way, but any time you limit the right to trial, it’s another chip out of the already perforated Bill of Rights. After a decade of unwarranted surveillance, torture, and the denial of basic legal rights, I would look very skeptically at any move to further restrict the rights of the accused. Particularly when you consider that over the past 35 years, there have been some 1200 executions by American governments, state and federal, while a number of condemned convicts exceeding ten percent of that total have been exonerated and released! With a 1 in 10 percent chance of executing an innocent person, I don’t think now is the time to be calling for fewer trials!
Rex, your mention of the rich committing crimes is actually a really good reminder-the death penalty is skewed against poor people of color, while rich whites tend to receive more lenient sentences. Racism and Class oppression have always been linked with the death penalty in America, another reason why I can never condone it.
Assuming you don’t curtail the rights of the accused to fair trial, the ratio of costs stands. Some information gathered by the Dallas Morning News in a March 8th 1993 evaluation of death penalty policy shows that the cost of processing and execution is 2.3 million dollars, or 3 times the cost of 40 years in prison.
More recent data (2003) from Kansas shows the cost of capital cases exceed those of non-capital cases by 70%, while a 2000 study found Florida’s death penalty costs 51 million more than it would to keep the same men locked up for life. Anyone in the mood for fiscal responsibility? STOP KILLING PEOPLE. IT WILL SAVE US MONEY.
MrsCaptJack, with regard to your last point, I agree that forgiveness, say, in the case of a brutal hate crime like this one is unlikely to be received (and far less likely to be deserved), our justice system should not be based on vengeance. Our justice system should be aimed at rehabilitation in most cases, and prevention of recidivism in cases where rehabilitation is not an attractive option. Prevention of recidivism can involve keeping the villain locked up in humane but spartan conditions for his entire miserable life. Personally, I believe the death penalty is wrong in principle, while you apparently do not. We can continue to argue the morality of it, and never satisfy the other of the justness of our respective causes but, barring the curtailment of the right to trial, no set of numbers can suggest that execution is economically responsible.
That said, I still think it’s wrong, and a horrible human rights violation. We must reform the penal system, and abolish execution once and for all.