(Image source from: DNA India)

An avowed white supremacist convicted of a notorious racist murder was executed on Wednesday in Texas. He was convicted for chaining a black man to the back of a pickup truck and dragging him to his death.

The 44-year-old John William King was put to death by lethal injection at 7:08 p.m. at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville.

King was one of three white men convicted of carrying out the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr., one of the most gruesome racist killings in recent United States history.

While Shawn Berry, who cooperated with investigators, was given life prison, the other convict Lawrence Brewer was executed in 2011.

During his trial, Berry testified that he and the two others were out drinking beer and cruising in a 1982 Ford pickup truck when they picked up Byrd, who was hitchhiking and drove him to a distant country road.

The 49-year-old Byrd was severely beaten by the mean before chaining him to the back of the truck by his ankles. Byrd was alive for around two miles while being dragged along the road.

He was decapitated when his body hit a concrete drain pipe, the medical specialist said.

Byrd's dismembered body was found outside a black church in the small town of Jasper, Texas, near the border with Louisiana.

The killing horrified the United States public and kindled memories of the era of racist lynchings of African Americans in the South.

In a request for a stay of execution filed with the Supreme Court late Tuesday - which was ultimately denied - King's lawyer, A. Richard Ellis, claimed that King's attorney during his 1999 trial ignored his request to plead not guilty.

"From the time of indictment through his trial, Mr. King maintained his absolute innocence, claiming that he had left his co-defendants and Mr. Byrd sometime prior to his death and was not present at the scene of the victim's murder," Ellis said.

"Despite Mr. King's explicit and repeated requests, his counsel conceded his guilt to murder at trial." Repeated efforts to have King's conviction overturned had failed, with the Supreme Court refusing to examine the case in 2018.

On Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously refused to grant him a reprieve.

During the sentencing phase of King's trial, his attorneys argued that prison violence had compelled him to hook up with a white prison gang.

"He wasn't a racist when he went in, he was when he came out," said his attorney, H. "Sonny" Cripps.

King's body is covered with racist tattoos proclaiming "Aryan Pride" and his allegiance to the Ku Klux Klan and an antiblack group known as the Confederate Knights of America. One tattoo is of a black man hanging from a noose.

By Sowmya Sangam