(October 1, 2007)--One of the white men condemned for the heinous dragging death of a black man in East Texas lost an appeal before the US Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court's refusal to hear the case appears to move 40-year-old Lawrence Russell Brewer closer to an execution date.

But the prospect of continuing executions in Texas is in doubt.

The court last week agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injection in Kentucky, and then halted a lethal injection last week in Texas.

Kentucky's lethal injection procedures are virtually the same as those in Texas.

That state's process is being reviewed after two inmates argued it is unconstitutionally cruel.

Brewer was one of three white men convicted of chaining James Byrd to the back of a pickup truck and dragging him along a country road near Jasper.

Brewer and John William King were sentenced to death for the racial hate crime that shocked the nation.

A third man, Shawn Allen Berry, received a life prison term.

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