Group Decries Pending Texas Execution
By Michael Graczyk
Originally published by The Associated Press, July 31, 2001
LIVINGSTON, Texas (AP) — Death row inmate Napoleon Beazley has come to terms with the fact that he only has a few weeks left to live.
"Death is inevitable," said Beazley, who was sentenced to die for a fatal carjacking he committed when he was 17. "It's not like it's my adversary."
Beazley's case may have left him resigned to his fate, but it has been seized by death penalty critics as the focus of a renewed criticism of the execution of teen-agers.
Amnesty International, in a new report highlighting Beazley's case, objects to the execution of teen offenders and calls the United States "a rogue state as far as capital punishment is concerned."
"The rest of the world has agreed that rehabilitation must win out over punishment as the overriding objective in responding to the crimes of children," said the report, released Tuesday.
Of the 249 condemned inmates executed since 1982, when Texas resumed carrying out capital punishment, nine committed their crime at the age of 17, the minimum age at which they're eligible for the death penalty. Beazley is among 31 Texas current death row prisoners who were 17 at the time of their crime.
Nationally, 18 convicted killers have been executed for crimes committed when they were younger than 18 since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in the mid-1970s, according to statistics from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Legal Defense Fund.
Beazley, who turns 25 on Sunday, is scheduled for lethal injection Aug. 15 for the fatal shooting of John Luttig, 63, who was targeted for his Mercedes Benz.
Luttig, whose son is a federal judge in Virginia, was confronted by three young men in the driveway of his home in Tyler, about 90 miles southeast of Dallas, the night of April 19, 1994.
Beazley and brothers Cedric and Donald Coleman, all from Grapeland, about 60 miles to the south, were arrested seven weeks after the shooting based on an anonymous tip.
Beazley's palm print was found on the wrecked car, and police tied the murder weapon to him. His bloody footprint was left beside Luttig's body.
"I'm confident the jury's verdict was correct, and the death sentence was appropriate," prosecutor Jack Skeen said. "We've done our job and the justice is being carried out."
Under Texas law, anyone who is at least 16 years old and is accused of a felony is considered an adult. Cedric Coleman was 20 at the time and Donald was 18. They testified against Beazley and received life prison terms. Beazley got a death sentence.
"I don't knock them for it," Beazley said of his co-defendants' testimony in a recent interview on death row.
Amnesty International, whose report is titled "Too Young to Vote, Old Enough to be Executed," estimates that 80 condemned inmates in America were under 18 when they killed.
The report acknowledges that the murder was a terrible act of violence.
"Those who have suffered as a result deserve compassion, respect and justice," the report adds. "These objectives cannot be furthered by killing Napoleon Beazley."
The report includes excerpts of affidavits from the Coleman brothers who now say some of their testimony at Beazley's trial was false.
Amnesty also contends prosecutors were influenced by Luttig's son, Michael, who sits on the Richmond, Va.-based U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
"That's absolutely not true," Skeen said. "We went in and prosecuted the triggerman. And all of the evidence supports that Beazley was the triggerman."
As for the Luttig Mercedes, Beazley said he and the Coleman brothers planned to take it to a Dallas chop-shop and collect $25,000. "This thing shouldn't have happened," he said of the murder.
Asked if he's innocent, Beazley responded, "No."
Beazley said of his scheduled execution: "I've never really lived with any hope. I don't want it to happen by any means, but it's not something I spend a lot of time dwelling on."
In appeals to federal courts, Beazley's attorneys have been rejected on 24 points, ranging from the constitutionality of the Texas death penalty statute to the competence of his trial lawyers. Issues now before the U.S. Supreme Court include a constitutional challenge to the execution of juveniles and an argument that his execution would violate an international treaty.
The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals already has noted that the U.S. Senate, when it ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that bars execution of 17-year-olds in 1992, stipulated that the United States reserved the right to impose capital punishment—including on those under 18.
