Beazley is put to deathAge issue doesn't sway parole board to urge clemency
05/29/2002
Napoleon Beazley, whose case drew international attention to the execution of those who commit capital crimes before the age of 18, was put to death Tuesday night in Huntsville for the 1994 carjacking-murder of a Tyler oilman.
The execution was carried out hours after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 10-7 against recommending that Gov. Rick Perry commute Mr. Beazley's death sentence.
Mr. Beazley, 25, was sentenced to die after a Smith County jury found him guilty of gunning down John Luttig in a botched carjacking. Mr. Luttig, 63, was shot at close range as he and his wife Bobbie returned home from a Bible study. Ms. Luttig survived by falling to the ground and playing dead as Mr. Beazley and two accomplices took the couple's 1989 Mercedes-Benz.
Mr. Beazley acknowledged his guilt after his conviction and offered a tearful public apology to Mr. Luttig's family in an April hearing in Tyler. In a recent televised interview, he commented on his age at the time of the crime: "If I was 15, if I was 20, if I was 25, it doesn't matter. It never should have happened."
Mr. Beazley appeared calm as he watched witnesses entering the death chamber. When asked whether he had a final statement, Mr. Beazley looked toward Suzanne Luttig of Tyler, the daughter of the victim, and paused. He then shook his head and said, "No."
He was pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m.
In a one-page typed statement released after his death, Mr. Beazley described his crime as "not just heinous. It was senseless." He said he was saddened that the was not given a second chance, adding, "No one wins tonight."
A high school class president, honors student and football star who was described by some in his hometown of Grapeland as a crack-cocaine dealer, Mr. Beazley was the 14th inmate executed in Texas this year and the fourth this month.
He had requested that no family or friends witness his execution.
Mr. Luttig's daughter and FBI Agent Dennis Murphy of Tyler, a Luttig family friend, witnessed the execution along with Smith County District Attorney Jack Skeen and Assistant District Attorney Ed Marty.
Prison officials said only about 30 death-penalty supporters and opponents demonstrated at the Walls Unit – a relatively small number compared with other high-profile executions.
DEATH ROW BY NUMBERS
28 offenders who were under the age of 18 when they committed their crimes are on Texas' death row. 10 men who were convicted of their crimes when they were under the age of 18 have been executed since Texas resumed use of the death penalty in the 1970s.
456 killers are on death row in Texas.
9 people who committed murder in Smith County, where Tyler is located, are on death row.
1 of those Smith County offenders on death row committed his crime before turning 18.
1 man who is accused of committing murder before the age of 18 in Smith County awaits trial.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected last-minute appeals Tuesday from Mr. Beazley's lawyers. Mr. Perry issued a statement denying Mr. Beazley's request for a 30-day reprieve, saying delaying punishment would "delay justice."
Mr. Beazley came within hours of execution last August but received a late stay from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Days before that stay, the Supreme Court made an unprecedented 3-3 ruling not to grant Mr. Beazley a reprieve, with three justices abstaining because of personal ties to Mr. Luttig's son – 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig.
The parole board then voted 10-6 against recommending commutation.
The case drew widespread attention because of Mr. Beazley's age at the time of the slaying and because of his lack of prior convictions. Pleas for clemency came from entities ranging from the European Union to Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, the American Bar Association, the judge who presided over Mr. Beazley's capital murder trial and the district attorney in Mr. Beazley's home county.
Dr. William Schultz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in Washington on Tuesday that the execution violated international law, and other officials with the human-rights group said that the United States was now among only five countries, including Congo, Nigeria, Iran and Saudi Arabia – to execute such youthful offenders.
"The U.S. continues its shameful unwillingness to acknowledge the failures of its capital punishment system – the failure to apply the death penalty justly, the failure to protect innocent people from capital prosecution and conviction, and the failure of the death penalty to decrease crime," Dr. Schultz said.
Some of Mr. Beazley's supporters and defense team tried to suggest that he didn't get a fair trial because he was black, his victim was a prominent white man, and his case was heard by an all-white jury.
They also argued that Judge Luttig was too actively involved in the prosecution, noting that the federal appellate judge moved his office to Tyler for the trial and alleging that the district attorney's office conferred with him too closely.
But Smith County prosecutors maintained that Mr. Beazley was legally an adult under Texas law and that he and two accomplices came to Tyler, stalked the Luttigs and gunned Mr. Luttig down without provocation in his own driveway.
District Attorney Jack Skeen noted Tuesday that Mr. Beazley's defense lawyers rejected or struck one black jury panelist and state and federal courts rejected claims of prosecutorial bias in the striking of several other black people from the jury.
"The legal issue on the age at which a defendant can be executed has already been decided and was settled long before this case gained so much national attention," Mr. Skeen said. "It's clear that Mr. Beazley certainly knew what his actions were, made intentional choices, and under Texas law, stands to receive the consequences of those actions – as he should."
Mr. Skeen and his former chief deputy prosecutor, David Dobbs, said the ordeal of Mr. Luttig's family had been particularly difficult because of what they termed an orchestrated effort by death-penalty opponents to attack Mr. Luttig's son. Both said the judge was no more interested or involved in his father's case than any other murder victim's relative.
"While people accused Mike Luttig of politicizing this case, he did anything but that, and the way the case became politicized is through a very public, deliberate campaign that has re-victimized him because of his national stature," said Mr. Dobbs, who is now in private practice. "What is being lost in the rhetoric – and it seems deliberately obscured – is the fact that Mike and his sister Suzanne Luttig lost their father and Bobbie Luttig lost her husband – all for a vehicle."
Defense lawyer David Botsford of Austin said he was particularly disappointed in the parole board's Tuesday vote because he believes the Legislature could soon outlaw execution in such cases. He noted that a bill that would've barred death sentences for young offenders passed the Texas House in last year's legislative session before dying in committee.
"That's unfortunate that we are so bloodthirsty that we have to kill our children," he said.
Pardons and Paroles Board member Brendolyn Rogers-Johnson of Duncanville, one of seven members to recommend clemency, said Mr. Beazley's age was only one of a number of factors influencing her vote.
"I looked at the fact that he was not a repeat offender, whether or not he would appear to be a continuous threat to society. I looked at his background," she said, adding that her vote was "one of the most difficult decisions I've ever had to make."
Board member Lynn Brown said the overriding factor in his vote against clemency was the viciousness of Mr. Beazley's crime and the certainty of his guilt. He said he interviewed Mr. Beazley in May, after defense lawyers requested a board interview, and asked him whether his age should be a factor in a clemency decision.
"He said, 'I have never put that forth as an argument; my attorneys put that forth,' " Mr. Brown said. "I asked him, 'Should the fact that you were age 17 have made the surviving victim any less terrified?' His answer was no. I also asked him the question, 'Did the fact that you were 17 make this any less lethal to the victim who died?' And he said no."
Board Chairman Gerald Garrett of Austin, who voted to recommend clemency, said the split vote from a board that usually votes unanimously should not be viewed as a "signal" of a shift in the board's view of capital cases involving young offenders.
Since reinstatement of the death penalty in the 1970s, Texas has executed nine other people who committed capital crimes while under the age of 18. Another 28 are on death row, including another Smith County offender convicted of kidnapping and killing an 8-year-old boy.
"Many are suggesting ... that this is precedent-setting, that this is some change in our mind-set. I would caution against that," Mr. Garrett said of the board's Tuesday vote.
"The next application before us, if that person happens to have been 17 at the time of the crime and that's brought to us as an issue, it will be thoroughly evaluated," he said. "But I would say that there won't be another case brought before the parole board like Napoleon Beazley's. No two cases are exactly alike."
Staff writer Michelle Mittelstadt in Washington and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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