Last year on this day, an African American by the name of
Troy Davis who murdered a White American Police Officer, Mark MacPhail and a
White Supremacist named Lawrence Brewer who murdered an African American man,
James Byrd Jr. were both executed by lethal injection in the U.S State of
Georgia and Texas respectively. I am against any racism myself, so I supported
both their executions. In my opinion, they both are ranked as the worst of the
worst. I heard that there will be a vigil today to honor Troy Davis, I will not
even waste my time on it. Why no vigil for Lawrence Brewer or any other
killers?
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| Troy Davis (left) & Lawrence Brewer (right) |
To learn
more about the Troy Davis Case, please read from this blog post.
To learn more about the murder of James Byrd Jr. Please read
this post from Wikipedia:
The murder of
James Byrd Jr. case study:
On June 7, 1998, Byrd, age 49, accepted a ride from Shawn Berry (age 24),
Lawrence Brewer (age 31) and John King (age 23). Berry, who was driving, was
acquainted with Byrd from around town. Instead of taking Byrd home, the three
men took Byrd to a remote county road out of town, beat him severely, urinated
on him and chained him by his ankles to their pickup truck before dragging him
for three miles. Brewer later claimed that Byrd's throat had been slashed by
Berry before he was dragged. However, forensic evidence suggests that Byrd had
been attempting to keep his head up while being dragged, and an autopsy
suggested that Byrd was alive during much of the dragging. Byrd died after his
right arm and head were severed after his body hit a culvert. His body had
caught the culvert on the side of the road, resulting in Byrd's decapitation.
Byrd's brain and skull were found intact, further suggesting he maintained
consciousness while being dragged.
Berry,
Brewer and King dumped their victim's mutilated remains in front of an
African-American church on Huff Creek Road; the three men then went to a
barbecue. Along the area where Byrd was dragged, authorities found a wrench
with "Berry" written on it. They also found a lighter that was
inscribed with "Possum", which was King's prison nickname. The
following morning, Byrd's limbs were found scattered across a seldom-used road.
The police found 81 places that were littered with Byrd's remains. State law enforcement
officials, along with Jasper's District Attorney, determined that since Brewer
and King were well-known white supremacists, the murder was a hate crime. They
decided to call upon the Federal Bureau of Investigation less than 24 hours
after the discovery of Byrd's remains.
King
had several racist tattoos: a black man hanging from a tree, Nazi symbols, the
words "Aryan Pride," and the patch for a gang of white supremacist
inmates known as the Confederate Knights of America. In a jailhouse letter to
Brewer that was intercepted by jail officials, King expressed pride in the
crime and said he realized in committing the murder he might have to die.
"Regardless of the outcome of this, we have made history. Death before
dishonor. Sieg Heil!" King wrote. An officer investigating the case also
testified that witnesses said King had referenced The Turner Diaries
after beating Byrd.
Berry,
Brewer and King were tried and convicted for Byrd's murder. Brewer and King
received the death penalty, while Berry was sentenced to life in prison.
Brewer
was executed by lethal injection on September 21, 2011 while King remains on
Texas' death row.
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James
Byrd Jr., shown in this 1997 family photo, was tied to a truck and dragged to
his death along a rural East Texas road early Sunday, June 7, 1998, near
Jasper, Texas. Lawrence Russell Brewer, 44, one of two purported white
supremacists condemned for Byrd’s death, is set for execution Wednesday for
participating in chaining Byrd to the back of a pickup truck, dragging the
black man along the road and dumping what was left of his shredded body outside
a black church and cemetery. (AP Photo/Byrd Family Photo, File) Photo: AP / SF
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Ross Byrd, who is the son of James
Byrd Jr. opposed the execution of his father’s killer but the MacPhail family
wanted to see justice done. I respect both their decisions. I read an article
by Brendan O’Neill in The Telegraph.uk with interest and I would like to give
my opinion on his writings and also my thoughts about the Abolitionists
treatment on the two executions.
Two men were executed in America yesterday – but only one of them won the pity of the human-rights brigade
Politics Last updated: September 22nd, 2011
Yesterday
in America, two men were executed, but you will probably only have heard of one
of them: Troy Davis, who was killed in the state of Georgia for the murder of a
police officer. The other executed man, Lawrence Brewer, put to death in the
state of Texas for murdering a black man in 1998, has barely featured in the
news at all. Unlike Davis, he did not win the backing of Amnesty
International and its trendy supporters. No one tweeted and retweeted their
sorrow over Brewer or made a public spectacle of how heavy his execution
weighed upon their hearts, as many did with Davis. No one lit candles outside
the American Embassy for Brewer in full glare of photojournalists’ clicking
cameras. No one wore t-shirts saying “I AM LAWRENCE BREWER”.
It
might seem obvious as to why Davis was championed while Brewer was ignored:
there were many doubts about Davis’s conviction, whereas Brewer was undoubtedly
guilty. Furthermore, he was a racist toerag, a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan,
whose murder of James Byrd Jr was racially motivated and horrifically executed.
But if you are opposed to the death penalty on principle, as many of the Troy
Davis campaigners claimed to be, then you should be just as outraged by the
execution of Brewer as you were by the execution of Davis. You should be as
opposed to the state killing of a guilty racist as you are to the state killing
of a possibly guilty black man. Even James Byrd Jr’s son asked
for the state of Texas to show mercy to his father’s killer, but no army of
bleeding-heart Twitterers backed him up.
The
airbrushing of Brewer from yesterday’s heated discussions on the death penalty
speaks volumes about the Troy Davis campaign. It seems pretty clear that it was
motivated, not by a principled, across-the-board opposition to the state
killing of citizens, but rather by campaigners’ desire to indulge in some very
public moral preening. Unlike the Brewer execution, which was ugly and
complicated, the Davis execution could be squeezed into a cosy moral narrative
in which the state of Georgia was depicted as backward and racist and those who
opposed the execution of Davis presented themselves as purer than pure, good
and decent, and more than willing to prove it by writing tweets of concern
every four or five minutes. What message should we take from this disparity in
campaigning? That Troy Davis did not deserve to die but Lawrence Brewer did?
Such moral flightiness, such brutal arbitrariness, reveals much about today’s
very changeable campaigners against the death penalty.
The
only thing I did not agree with Brendan O’Neill is that there were doubts about
Troy Davis’s conviction, no there were no doubts, he is as guilty as sin.
However, most of what he wrote was actually true.
No noise for other killers?
Nobody is surprise to see
abolitionists light candles and mourn killers who are going to be executed. The
anti-death penalty websites did mention Ross Bryd’s name as a victim’s family
member who is against the death penalty, but they did not do it with as much
enthusiasm as they did when they showed support for Troy Davis. I also noticed
that the number of people who protested outside the execution chamber of
Lawrence Brewer was only nothing compared to those who protested Troy Davis’s
execution at the Georgia Diagnostic and
Classification State Prison and at the American Embassy of other countries. It was
like comparing the size of an ant to an elephant.
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Ricky
Jason wears a photograph of James Byrd Jr. outside the Texas Department of
Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit before the execution of Lawrence Russell
Brewer Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2011, in Huntsville, Texas. Brewer, 44, one of two
purported white supremacists condemned for the dragging death of James Byrd
Jr., was executed Wednesday. Brewer was convicted for his participation in
chaining Byrd to the back of a pickup truck, dragging the black man along a
rural East Texas road and dumping what was left of his shredded body outside a
black church cemetery in 1998. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip) Photo: David J.
Phillip, AP / SF
|
As O’Neill
wrote above, nobody wore T-shirts saying, ‘I AM LAWRENCE BREWER.’ If you are an
abolitionist, I rather you join Ross Byrd in protesting the execution of
Lawrence Brewer as he is against the execution of his father’s killer. You
should even make a louder noise by saying, “His son is against the execution,
so am I.” I have a strong feeling that you will not be doing that.
Will you
be protesting the execution of all these dangerous murderers? Will you be
wearing T-shirts saying, “I AM (NAME OF THE KILLER).”? Click on the names and tell me if you
will wear a T-shirt like that:
I AM AMROZI
I AM LEIGH ROBINSON
I AM MICHAEL WILLIAM LENZ
I AM YUKIO YAMAJI
I AM HIROSHI MAEUE
I AM JOHN GEORGE HAIGH
I AM ANTHONY SOWELL
I AM MAMORU TAKUMA
No, I
doubt the abolitionists will even think of doing that as their crimes are too
heinous. For me, no way, I will never even wear T-shirts like that. I rather
wear T-shirts of the victims’ names than the killers’.
There are
many cases of White-Americans being executed for murdering African Americans. I
can name two here:
Lisa Yvonne Alexander Crider
was murdered by Brandon Hedrick on May 10, 1997. He was executed by the electric
chair in Virginia on July 20, 2006.
Everett Curry together with Eddie Brooks were murdered by Edwin Hart Turner on December 12, 1995. Edwin Hart
Turner was executed by lethal injection in the State of Mississippi on
Wednesday February 8, 2012.
The NAACP should be
supporting the executions of Lawrence Brewer, Brandon Hedrick and Edwin Hart
Turner if they truly care for murdered victims and their families who are
African Americans. To add more, they should even condemn what Troy Davis did. They
should also show support for the families of the 11 victims of Anthony Sowell. I
care for all murdered victims regardless of their race. So I just want to say
two things: “I AM NOT TROY DAVIS! I AM NOT LAWRENCE BREWER!”
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