Parents Beg Jury to Spare White Supremacist Killer

BRYAN, Texas — The parents of a white supremacist convicted in the dragging death of a black man tearfully pleaded with a jury Tuesday to spare their son’s life.

“I know what you have found him guilty of. It’s terrible,” Lawrence Brewer Sr. said, sobbing. But he added: “To take his life is more than this family is going to bear. This family has been torn apart, as I’m sure the Byrd family has.”

Lawrence Russell Brewer, 32, was convicted Monday of murder in the slaying last year of James Byrd Jr., 49. Byrd was chained to the back of a pickup truck by his ankles and dragged to pieces in the town of Jasper.

The jurors were to hear closing arguments and begin deliberating Brewer’s fate today. They can choose life in prison or death by injection.

Brewer’s former prison buddy, John William King, 24, was convicted in February and condemned to die. A third man, Shawn Allen Berry, also 24, will be tried next month.

Brewer’s mother pleaded for his life, saying her son had been tossed out of the house at 14 because her husband wouldn’t tolerate his drug use.

“He is a good person, he’s a loving person,” Helen Brewer said. “But the drugs . . . influenced him to go the other way.”

She said her son was a follower, not a leader, on the night of the crime, and added: “I don’t believe it was in his heart to do it.”