PARIS, Texas — Members of the Nation of Islam, the New Black Panthers and the NAACP promised Saturday to launch protests bringing more attention to the killing of an East Texas man whose death recalls, for some, a notorious decade-old hate crime.
Speaker after speaker at a memorial service said they disagreed with the district attorney’s stance that Brandon McClelland’s death was not racially motivated.
“If this is not a hate crime, then there is no such thing as a hate crime,” said Krystal Muhammad of the New Black Panthers. “Even though our brother was viciously slain, we will not let him die in vain.”
Two white men accused of running McClelland down and dragging his body about 70 feet beneath their pickup remain jailed on murder charges. They face up to life in prison if convicted.
Authorities have cast doubt on theories that the attack was a hate crime but said they will take another look when autopsy results become available this week. A determination of racial bias in a crime can increase penalties, but not for the murder charges these defendants face.
Still, a finding of racial bias in McClelland’s killing could make a powerful statement. And Deric Muhammad of the Nation of Islam called McClelland’s death an “exact copycat” of the 1998 James Byrd case.
Byrd, a black man in Jasper, about 200 miles south of Paris, was chained by the ankles to the back of a pickup by three white supremacists and dragged for 3 miles. Two of the killers are on death row; the third is serving a life sentence.
McClelland died after going with two white friends on a late-night beer run across the state line to Oklahoma. On the way back, authorities said, McClelland argued with Shannon Keith Finley and Charles Ryan Crostley, both 27. He then left the pickup to walk home.
Authorities said that the men ran McClelland over and that his body was dragged beneath the truck. His body was discovered Sept. 16. McClelland’s mother said fragments of her son’s skull could still be found three days later.
Crostley and Finley are jailed on charges of murder and tampering with evidence. Finley’s attorney did not immediately respond to a voice mail message Saturday, and a call to a listing for Crostley’s attorney was not answered.
Unlike the Byrd case, there is no evidence that McClelland was tied or chained to the truck.
Officials also point out that McClelland was friends with the two murder suspects.
In an odd twist, McClelland served jail time after pleading guilty to perjury for providing a false alibi for Finley in the latter’s murder trial in 2004. Finley eventually pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
