Background

The crime
James Byrd Jr., 49, was beaten, stripped nude and chained to the back of a pickup on June 7, 1998, authorities say. He was dragged for three miles on a rural blacktop road as his body was ripped to pieces. His head and shoulders were torn off. They were found about a mile from the rest of his torso.

The defendants
Only John William King, a 24-year-old resident of Jasper, Texas, is currently on trial for murder. He pleaded not guilty. Two other men accused of the same crime, Lawrence Russell Brewer, 31, of Sulphur Springs, Texas, and Shawn Allen Berry, 23, of Jasper, face trial in the future.

King and Brewer once shared a prison cell and both belonged to a small racist prison gang. King was serving time for burglary; Brewer was jailed on a drug sentence.

King and Berry have been friends since high school. The three men were roommates when the crime occurred.

Tattoos
King has several racist tattoos. They depict the lynching of a black man hanging from a tree, Nazi swastikas and a Woody Woodpecker cartoon character wearing a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood.

The penalty
If convicted of capital murder, all three men face life in prison or death by lethal injection.

The jury
The 12-member jury consists of six white men, one black man and five white women. Jasper County, from which the jurors were drawn, is 18 percent black.

The location
The trial is being held in Jasper, Texas, a town of about 8,000 people located in eastern Texas, about 100 miles northeast of Houston.