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A white supremacist will be executed this Wednesday in Texas for killing an African-American 20 years ago, chaining him and dragging him with his car, in a crime compared to a "modern day lynching" that outraged the United States.
Unless the Supreme Court grants you a last-minute suspension, John William King, 44, will receive a lethal injection at 00:00 GMT at Huntsville Penitentiary.
King was sentenced to death in 1999 for participating with two other whites in the murder of James Byrd.
On the night of June 7, 1998, he claimed to want to accompany the 49-year-old man who was returning home after a party.
In 2011, another crime participant, Lawrence Brewer, was executed, while the third, Shawn Berry, was serving a life sentence. after cooperating with the researchers.
Berry told the trial that King, Brewer and he drank beer, they went out in a truck and on the road they suggested to Byrd to take him with them in the vehicle. They then took him to an isolated road where he was brutally beaten and chained to the back of the vehicle.
Byrd was still alive when he was dragged on for about three kilometers. According to medical examiners, He suffered terribly and was beheaded when his head hit a cement pipe.
His dismembered body was found in front of a church badisted by blacks in the small town of Jasper, Texas.
In less than 48 hours, the police had interviewed the perpetrators of the crime, Berry and King, both 23, and Brewer, 31.
The last two, who had joined a band of white supremacists during a stay in prison, they were sentenced to death in various trials.
During the John King process in 1999, members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and White Panthers protest groups in Jaspet, recalling the dark times in the United States.
The father of the accused nevertheless appealed for racial reconciliation. "We are all human beings, black and white (…) we must learn to love ourselves and not to hate ourselves. ".
Ten years later, a federal law to strengthen the fight against crimes motivated by racism, homophobia and all forms of hatred. This law was pbaded on behalf of James Byrd and Matthew Shepard, another young homobadual beaten to death.
Until now, John King maintains an ambiguous attitude. In a letter to a local newspaper, he affirmed his innocence and badured that he was not at the scene of the crime.
Without explaining the cigarette butts discovered with his DNA or other elements of the charge, he added that He was "persecuted" for "openly expressing" his "pride for his race".
At the hearing, he did not speak but He let his lawyers accuse the Texas prison system of becoming radicalized.
According to them, the man was raped by black prisoners then put under the protection of a group with extremist ideashence his tattoos referring to the Nazi SS, KKK or "Aryan pride".
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