John William King, the mastermind behind one of the most gruesome hate crimes in history – the murder of James Byrd Jr – was executed by a lethal injection at 7:08 pm local time on April 24th in the in Huntsville Unit at the Texas State Penitentiary, The Sun and LAD Bible report.
He refused to look at the victim’s family as the injection was administered and died twelve minutes after receiving the lethal shot of pentobarbital. He did not make a final statement, neither did he show any remorse for what he’d done.
Reportedly, his last written words were: “Capital Punishment: Them without the capital get the punishment.”
His death was peaceful and painless, unlike the one of his victim, 49-year-old father-of-three James Byrd Jr.
The hate crime that shook America occurred twenty-one years ago in Jasper, a town of about 7,600 residents near the Louisiana border.
Three men, led by King, picked him up and drove him to the outskirts of the town where they beat him and spray-painted his face with black paint.
They then tied a logging chain around the man’s ankles and dragged him behind their pickup truck for almost three miles. His eyebrows, knees and backside were skinned to the bone and his genitals had been completely ground away. Autopsy results showed Byrd was alive for much of the trip before his head struck a culvert.
Byrd Jr.’s sister, Clara Taylor, who was present at King’s execution, said he ‘showed no remorse then and showed no remorse tonight’.
“The execution for his crime was just punishment. I felt nothing, no sense of relief, no sense of happy this is over with,” she added.
“Apart from him saying the word ‘No,’ it was like he was asleep,” Criminal Justice Department spokesman Jeremy Desel said, as quoted by LadBible’s writer Rebecca Shepherd.
According to Mr Desel, no members of King’s family were present to witness his final moments.