LOOK AGAIN
“Napoleon Beazley‘s government is planning to kill him on August 15, 2001 for a murder committed when he was aged 17. If he lived in China, or Yemen, or Kyrgyzstan, or Kenya, or Russia, or Indonesia, or Japan, or Cuba, or Singapore, or Guatemala, or Cameroon, or Syria, or almost any other of the diminishing number of countries that retain the death penalty, Napoleon Beazley would not be confronting this fate. But he lives, and is scheduled to die, in the United States of America.”
Amnesty International
“Words seem trite in describing what follows when your husband is murdered in your presence, when your father is stripped from your life. The horror, the agony, the emptiness, the despair, the chaos, the confusion. The sense that one’s life no longer has any purpose… Crimes such as those committed against my family are intolerable in any society that calls itself not only free, but civilized.”
J. Michael Luttig, son of Napoleon Beazley murder victim John Luttig
Napoleon Beazley made that hole in one, receiving a last-minute stay of execution from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. But in April 2002, after seven years on death row, his stay was lifted and his execution rescheduled for the following month. In the months since I’d interviewed him for The Huntsville Item, I’d met him a ton of times, because he was the poster child for juvenile executions and so many media outlets wanted to do stories on him. Working for the prison system, I got to go behind the curtain, and I now saw Napoleon in a different light. Because we were from similar backgrounds and about the same age, we had a good rapport. He was a funny guy, would tell little jokes. One time, he asked me what I did, I told him and he said, “You watch executions? That’s some sick shit!” I wrote it down because I thought it was so funny.
There were other inmates who seemed like they were genuinely sorry for their crime, and most people on death row didn’t set out to do what they did. They weren’t true psychopaths, in that they didn’t wake up one morning and decide to kill someone. Maybe they set out to burglarize a house or rob someone and it ended up in murder. But Napoleon was on a different level altogether. Not only did I get the sense that he wouldn’t have been in any more trouble, I thought he would have been a productive member of society, were he given a second chance. He could have done great things. When someone is found guilty of capital murder, a question a jury is supposed to answer is, “Is this person a future danger?” In Napoleon’s case, I think the jury got it wrong. Then again, you never thought Napoleon would have done what he did in the first place, so I can understand why jurors thought like they did.
It seemed like everyone who came into contact with Napoleon liked him. His fellow death row inmates liked him, the correctional officers liked him, the reporters liked him. They all knew he was guilty of the crime, but I think a lot of them were rooting for him to get another stay or for his sentence to be commuted. Jeffery Doughtie, who occupied the cell next door, told me how bad he felt about his neighbor’s impending death: “Napoleon hadn’t even learned how to live, and he’s having to learn how to die.” I was rooting for him, too, but felt guilty about feeling that way. That’s what made Napoleon’s case so complicated. It was easy for me to say Napoleon had fallen in with a bad crowd, had done a stupid thing and, if given another chance, wouldn’t have done anything like it again. He didn’t kill my dad while my mom was lying on the floor, pretending to be dead. It was a heinous crime. His victims were in their home, where they thought they’d be safe. Had I been J. Michael Luttig, I’d have absolutely wanted Napoleon to be executed. Did I have any right to feel sympathy, when Napoleon didn’t take anything from me?
On the morning of May 28, 2002, Larry and I visited Napoleon in the holding cell. We met him at 1:24 p.m., and I wrote on my notepad: “Smaller than I thought.” I had no idea he was that short, because this was the first time I’d seen him standing up. Whenever I’d seen him in the visitation area on death row, he’d been sitting down, in a booth behind the Plexiglass. He was quite well built, a football player, so in my mind he was this tall guy. Suddenly, Napoleon wasn’t the same person. As well as shrinking, he had bags under his eyes, like he hadn’t slept. He was quiet and reserved.
I usually wished a condemned man good luck, because they often had appeals still pending. But this time I didn’t know what to say. My eyes were stinging, and I felt like I was going to cry. But there was no way in hell I could.
Larry Fitzgerald
Napoleon had been on death row almost as long as I’d been at TDCJ. The first time I saw him, I was amazed at how young he looked. It was his age that bothered me most: he was a kid of 17, who couldn’t vote or buy liquor or cigarettes when he committed the crime, yet he was old enough to be executed. After they locked him up in county jail, I heard he wouldn’t sleep on the bunk, he’d sleep on the floor instead. I think that was him trying to punish himself. When death row was at the Ellis Unit and they gave the offenders jobs, they made him a porter. That tells you that he was somebody the warden could trust. He was like his mom and dad raised him, was always polite and followed every order. He was what we call in the prison system “a good convict-citizen.” He deserved a second chance.
On the day of his execution, me and Michelle went back there to take him through the process and I suddenly had this feeling that he needed to write out a last statement, rather than mutter a few words on the gurney, because he was such a smart person. So I said to him, “If you’ve got something you want to say, write out what’s in your heart and I’ll make sure it’s transcribed and handed out after this thing is over.” He agreed. Then, just before we left, I turned to him and said, “Napoleon, you look pretty calm.” He replied, “Look again.” I shook his hand and left, but I was never able to flush that final conversation out of my mind. The next time I saw him, he was on the gurney with straps all over him. I had some pretty strong feelings about it. Napoleon’s death had a profound effect on me. He was my friend. I was sad to see him go, and getting awfully tired of executions…
Later that afternoon, I had to type up Napoleon’s statement for the media. He’d written it in less than an hour, but it was so sincere and an impressive piece of penmanship. As I was typing, I was hoping he’d get a stay, because I didn’t want to see him die, while feeling guilty for thinking that way. It was a complex day. The Board of Pardons and Parole usually voted unanimously not to commute an inmate’s sentence to life imprisonment or grant a reprieve, but in Napoleon’s case they voted 10–7 and 13–4 respectively, which showed they were still deeply divided. Then news came in that the Supreme Court had voted 6–0 against staying Napoleon’s execution.
I didn’t have any choice but to hold my emotions in check, because that was the first time Larry had let me do a press conference, and I didn’t want to let him down. We didn’t have a press conference after most executions, because there wasn’t enough media interest, and when we did, they were usually small affairs held inside. But because there was so much media in town for Napoleon, we set up a podium outside. All the media from Tyler County was down, national newspapers, and I was going out live on CNN, so it wouldn’t have looked good if I’d started weeping. I typed up a skeleton script, leaving out details to be filled in later—time pronounced dead, last statement, demeanor—and headed to the death chamber. And while Napoleon was dying on the gurney, at the age of 25, I was making notes…
“stoic, didn’t look up… when asked if he had a statement,
‘no, no’… closed his eyes, coughed several times… never opened eyes—small smile? 10 coughs—head lifted off gurney during 3.”
Michelle’s notes on the execution of Napoleon Beazley, May 28, 2002
Napoleon Beazley’s written last statement
The act I committed to put me here was not just heinous, it was senseless. But the person that committed that act is no longer here—I am.
I’m not going to struggle physically against any restraints. I’m not going to shout, use profanity or make idle threats. Understand though that I’m not only upset, but I’m saddened by what is happening here tonight. I’m not only saddened, but disappointed that a system that is supposed to protect and uphold what is just and right can be so much like me when I made the same shameful mistake.
If someone tried to dispose of everyone here for participating in this killing, I’d scream a resounding, “No.” I’d tell them to give them all the gift that they would not give me… and that’s to give them all a second chance.
I’m sorry that I am here. I’m sorry that you’re all here. I’m sorry that John Luttig died. And I’m sorry that it was something in me that caused all of this to happen to begin with.
Tonight, we tell the world that there are no second chances in the eyes of justice… Tonight, we tell our children that in some instances, in some cases, killing is right.
This conflict hurts us all, there are no SIDES. The people who support this proceeding think this is justice. The people that think that I should live think that is justice. As difficult as it may seem, this is a clash of ideals, with both parties committed to what they feel is right. But who’s wrong if in the end we’re all victims?
In my heart, I have to believe that there is a peaceful compromise to our ideals. I don’t mind if there are none for me, as long as there are for those who are yet to come. There are a lot of men like me on death row—good men—who fell to the same misguided emotions, but may not have recovered as I have.
Give those men a chance to do what’s right. Give them a chance to undo their wrongs. A lot of them want to fix the mess they started, but don’t know how. The problem is not in that people aren’t willing to help them find out, but in the system telling them it won’t matter anyway.
No-one wins tonight. No-one gets closure. No-one walks away victorious.