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Boris goes off
Although Russian President Yeltsin left early, the OSCE meeting provided evidence of the West's growing sentiment that human rights are as sacred as national sovereignty.
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[11/17/99]

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Reform Party hopeful Buchanan's mix of barbs and bombast finds a ready audience down in Clinton country.
By Suzi Parker
[11/17/99]

In cold blood?
The last trial in the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. is delivered to the jury.
By Ashley Craddock
[11/17/99]

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The verdict marked the end of a grueling series of three trials that has put the East Texas town of Jasper on the national map as a locus of racism and hate crimes. All three defendants -- Berry, Bill King and Russell Brewer -- have been found guilty of capital murder. King and Russell have been sentenced to die by lethal injection. The jury sentenced Berry to life in prison, which carries a minimum of 40 calendar years served before parole.

Byrd, a 49-year-old black man, was drunk and staggering down the side of the road when the three white men picked him up in the back of Berry's pickup truck. The four men then headed out into the thick piney woods that ring Jasper on all sides. On a logging road in the middle of nowhere, some combination of the white men beat Byrd, chained him to the back of the pickup with a 24-foot galvanized chain and dragged him until his head tore off on a culvert. They dumped his body more than three miles from their starting point, in front of a small wooden church attended by the members of the black community.

Berry, who fingered his codefendants in a confession made a little more than 24 hours after the killing, maintained that he was a scared-rabbit sidekick roped into a nightmare ride orchestrated by Brewer and King. Much of the prosecution's case focused on convincing the jury that Berry actually drove the truck on what District Attorney Guy James Gray positioned as a fatal joyride.

The murder gained immediate notoriety. In its wake, the Ku Klux Klan, New Black Panthers, Jesse Jackson and the national media all descended on Jasper. A quiet community that has always prided itself on a genteel, don't-rock-the-boat attitude toward race, Jasper suddenly had something to prove: that it was not a bastion of old-school racism. The necessary evidence? A trio of death sentences. "Jasper was traumatized by this event," says Royce Robb, a retired Methodist minister concerned about the trial's fairness who watched the verdict being delivered Thursday. "It shocked Jasper. Ever since it happened I've heard the same mantra: 'We're going to put all three to death.'"

King and Brewer, both avowed racists, proved relatively easy to hang. Berry has been a harder case. No one ever said he was a racist. In fact, some 16 character witnesses explicitly testified that he was not. Until the Byrd killing, no evidence existed that Berry harbored secret race hatreds. At worst he was a drunk-driving loaf-about who sometimes slapped his girlfriend and once went to boot camp for breaking into a deserted warehouse.

With the finding of capital murder, the town has, at least in theory, cleared its name. "We were apprehensive at first," said Clara Taylor, Byrd's sister, "but we're pleased with the verdict. And I'm not sure we had any doubt about a fair trial."

Next page | Is Berry a threat to society?