Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed in Texas Wednesday evening for his involvement in the infamous dragging death of a black man 13 years ago . Brewer , 44 , was one of three men convicted for involvement in the murder of James Byrd . He was executed by lethal injection at 6:21 p.m. local time ( 7:21 p.m . ET ) Wednesday , according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice . Brewer ate a huge final meal , according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark . It consisted of chicken fried steaks , a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger , a cheese omelet , a bowl of fried okra , barbeque , fajitas , pizza , and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts . After the meal , Brewer was given time to make phone calls to family and friends . Brewer and two other white men kidnapped the 49-year-old black man on the night of June 7 , 1998 . They chained him by the ankles to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him for 3 ½ miles down a country road near Jasper , Texas . Byrd died when he was decapitated after he hit a culvert . Prosecutors said the crime , which they described it as one of the most vicious hate crimes in U.S. history , was intended to promote Brewer 's fledgling white supremacist organization . During his 1999 trial , they called Brewer a racist psychopath . Brewer was a former `` Exalted Cyclops '' of a racist prison gang affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan . He spent most of his adult life in prison for burglary , cocaine possession and parole violations . During the trial , Brewer took the witness stand and contended that he was a bystander , not a killer . He tearfully admitted being present when Byrd was dragged to his death but , he said , `` I did n't mean to cause his death . I had no intentions of killing anybody . '' Brewer said accomplice John William King initiated the killing by fighting with Byrd . He also said the third defendant , Shawn Berry , slashed Byrd 's throat and then chained him to Berry 's pickup . Brewer admitted kicking Byrd and spraying Byrd 's face with black paint . But he said it was a reflex action taken to try to break up the fight between Byrd and King . When Brewer was sentenced to death in 1999 , Jasper County District Attorney Guy James Gray said that , while he did not personally favor the death penalty , it was necessary in Brewer 's case . `` This is a situation where if you do n't give the death penalty to this man , he will kill again , '' said Gray . To impose the death penalty , the jurors in Brewer 's trial had to answer three questions under Texas law : . -- Would Brewer be a threat to society in the future ; . -- Did Brewer mean to kill Byrd ; . -- And , were there mitigating circumstances that would warrant sparing Brewer 's life ? To sentence Brewer to death , the jurors voted unanimously on each question -- answering the first two yes and the last no . The execution was the 11th this year in Texas , the most active death-penalty state . King also was sentenced to death and is awaiting the outcome of an appeal . The third man , Berry , was sentenced to life in prison . In 2009 , President Barack Obama signed into law expanded hate crime legislation that was named after Byrd and Mathew Shepard , a gay Wyoming man who died after being kidnapped and severely beaten in October 1998 .
Lawrence Brewer executed in Texas at 7:21 p.m . ET . The execution of the man convicted of killing a police officer and his wife was carried out by lethal injection on Wednesday evening after an hour long legal battle that began when he refused to sign a death Byrd was chained to a truck and dragged to death . A prosecutor described Brewer as a racist psychopath .