With a lethal injection, they executed the white supremacist who participated in one of the most brutal crimes in the United States.

The state of Texas executed Wednesday John William King, a man sentenced to death by the racist murder of African-American James Byrd. The crime shocked the United States in 1998 for its brutality.

King, 44, was declared death at 7:08 pm local time after receiving a lethal injection in Huntsville Prison, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

As always, we asked King if he wanted to say anything before the injection was given, but he did not say anything.

Crime

The crime for which King was executed on Wednesday took place on June 7, 1998, when Byrd, 49, was returning home to Jasper in eastern Texas.

King and his accomplices Lawrence Brewer (executed in 2011) and Shawn Berry (sentenced to life imprisonment) ran into Byrd, tied him to the ankles at his truck and they dragged her during five kilometers on a highway, as was considered proven in the lawsuit.

According to the forensic information, Byrd died in the middle of the journey to be beheaded and lose an arm. Finally, King, Brewer and Berry threw their bodies in front of a church of African American parishioners.

Years later, Byrd's name was badociated with laws aimed at bolstering hate-motivated crime, both in Texas and at the federal level.

King and his band of white supremacists

King, he was 23 when he committed the crime and had already been jailed for robbery. In prison he was part of a group of white supremacists.

In his body he had Nazi tattoos like the swastika and the SS, symbols of the Ku Klux Klan, Confederation flag, "Aryan pride" or drawing of an African-American hanging from a tree by a rope, according to court documents.

One of the victim's sisters, Louvon Harris, attended the execution, as he did with Brewer in 2011, and told the The Washington Post that the two Byrd treaties "like an animal."

"They were a danger to society, it was at that moment that we started to change our opinion on the death penalty," he said, explaining that the grave of his brother had been profaned twice and now protected by a fence.

King is the fourth prisoner executed this year in the United States and the third in the state of Texas. Since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976, 1,494 people have been executed across the country, including 562 in Texas.