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Coverage of Beazley's case has focused above all on the fact that he was "only 17 at the time of the slaying," as the New York Times put it. Beazley's lawyers have also alleged that the victim's son exercised undue influence on the prosecutors' decision to ask for the death penalty, that the jury was racially biased, and that the lawyer who argued Beazley's original appeal was incompetent. And his two codefendants recanted part of their testimony, in which they said that before the crime Beazley had said he wanted "to see what it feels like to see somebody die." Prosecutors used this testimony to support their argument for the death penalty.

Beazley had no prior criminal record; his small-time crack dealing had gone undetected before the murder. The son of the first black city council member in Grapeland, Texas, he was a star football player and president of the senior class at the local high school. Still, no one openly disputes that he committed the murder, shooting John Luttig twice in the head, though some of his anti-death penalty supporters (about whom more below) manage to hint that there is some uncertainty about who actually pulled the trigger.

Luttig, 63 when he was killed, is invariably described in newspaper stories as a "civic leader." He had pulled his 1989 Mercedes into the driveway, having brought his wife home from a Bible study, when he was surprised by Beazley and his friends. "It was supposed be a carjacking," Jim Yardley wrote in a August 10 story in the Times, "and whether Mr. Beazley fired out of rage or in a fit of panic, John Luttig was killed as his terrified wife crawled under the car to survive."

There's a bit of psychologizing and special pleading in that account. Rage or a "fit of panic" aren't the only alternatives if one wants to speculate on what was going through Beazley's mind as put a gun next to a stranger's head and pulled the trigger. Maybe he did it because he could, because he was the one holding the gun and Luttig was helpless. Maybe he did it without thinking at all—the awful but logical conclusion of a series of small choices, one leading to the next.

And what is Beazley's own version? Well, Yardley reports, "he does not say he is innocent, but he will not explain exactly what happened that night." To his credit, Beazley doesn't offer any excuses to Yardley, though his refusal to clarify what happened seems odd.

A visit to the Web makes an unclear picture even murkier. Type in "Napoleon Beazley" and you are immediately directed to an impressive site maintained by the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty. Here you will find a summary of Beazley's case, including a line listing his occupation as "Artist, poet, philosopher; Brother, friend." There are links to "Webpages of Napoleon's International Supporters," "Napoleon's Italian Website ," "Project Napoleon," and much more, including, of course, a great deal about international indignation over the barbarity of the United States.

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August (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45