One Night, Two Executions Possible
On Wednesday night, an unrepentant, white supremacist murderer was executed at the same time Troy Davis had been scheduled to die before the Supreme Court delayed it.
On Wednesday night, an unrepentant, white supremacist murderer was executed at the same time Troy Davis had been scheduled to die before the Supreme Court delayed it.
Lawrence Russell Brewer, 44, was sentenced to death row 13 years ago after he and two of his buddies chained a black man, 49-year-old James Byrd Jr., to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him for miles down a bumpy asphalt road to a bloody, dismembered death.
The odd juxtaposition of the two cases — a man admittedly guilty of his crime and another who could be innocent — was not lost on the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, which sent an email to supporters Wednesday asking them to “please join NCADP in opposing the executions of both men. We stand against all executions without reservation.” –BF
Your support matters…Greg Mitchell in The Nation:
Nevertheless, Byrd’s only son, Ross, has campaigned against the execution of Brewer, as a member of Murder Victims For Reconciliation (a group profiled in the book I co-wrote with Robert Jay Lifton, Who Owns Death?). Yesterday he told Reuters: “You can’t fight murder with murder. Life in prison would have been fine. I know he can’t hurt my daddy anymore. I wish the state would take in mind that this isn’t what we want.”
It will be interesting to see how many of those who protest the Troy Davis execution will also raise their voices against the state murder of the horrid racist killer Lawrence Brewer.
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