tazzygirl -> RE: Update on Trayvon Martin case (10/7/2012 8:18:12 PM)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States Although lynchings have become rare following the civil rights movement and changing social mores, some have occurred. In 1981, two KKK members in Alabama randomly selected a 19-year-old black man, Michael Donald, and murdered him, to retaliate for a jury's acquittal of a black man accused of murdering a police officer. The Klansmen were caught, prosecuted, and convicted. A $7 million judgment in a civil suit against the Klan bankrupted the local subgroup, the United Klans of America.[49] In 1998, Shawn Allen Berry, Lawrence Russel Brewer, and ex-convict John William King murdered James Byrd, Jr. in Jasper, Texas. Byrd was a 49-year-old father of three, who had accepted an early-morning ride home with the three men. They attacked him and dragged him to his death behind their truck.[50] The three men dumped their victim's mutilated remains in the town's segregated African-American cemetery and then went to a barbecue.[51] Local authorities immediately treated the murder as a hate crime and requested FBI assistance. The murderers (two of whom turned out to be members of a white supremacist prison gang) were caught and stood trial. Brewer and King were sentenced to death; Berry was sentenced to life in prison.
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