US: A man is on death row for a murder committed when he was 17, writesPatrick Smyth
At 17, a US citizen is deemed by the state insufficiently mature to vote, to sign a contract, to serve on a jury, or to join the army (without parental consent). But he or she is mature enough to be held as responsible as an adult for a murder, and executed. At least, in 22 states.
Barring an unlikely last-minute reprieve, Napoleon Beazley will today, in the capital of executions, Texas, pay that price for a 1994 murder he committed at 17. The execution, the seventh in the state this month, has provoked particular international protests from opponents of the death penalty, including the EU, because of his age. "I am astounded that Texas and a few other states in the United States take children from their families and execute," Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said recently of the case.
Opponents of the execution also point out that he was convicted of capital murder by an all-white jury and they are appalled at a ruling against him by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeal - it found that while Texas law provides prisoners a right to a lawyer for the habeas corpus appeals that are an essential part of the appeals process against death sentences, that provision did not bestow a right to competent counsel.
Beazley's new lawyers argue that the court-appointed lawyer in his case did not have the experience to draft the complex pleadings.
The killing of John Luttig (63), the father of a judge, was brutal. Beazley with two friends were involved in a botched car-jacking when he shot Luttig once and then finished him off, watched by Luttig's wife who lay on the ground feigning death.
Today his lawyers will try one last appeal to the Supreme Court which has already approved the execution, with three judges excusing themselves because they know the murdered man's son. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles yesterday voted to go ahead with the execution and reject his petition for clemency.
Last August it voted 10-6 against, before a court temporarily spared him four hours before execution, but the board has only voted for clemency once in 30 years.
Beazley, a high school football star, the president of his senior class, a son of a respected family in his home town of Grapeland, Texas, had no criminal record before his arrest, though he later told authorities he had sold crack and owned a gun.
"This is a crime, a mistake on my part," he said. "It's something I'm very sorry for. You reach the point where you say: 'Man, I wish I had a second chance to make right the things I've done wrong, to fix the stuff I've started.' But you don't have that second chance." He has apologised to the Luttig family and said there was no excuse for what he had done.
His death would make him the 19th US prisoner to die since 1976 for a murder committed by a killer younger than 18. He would be the 11th in Texas.
The campaign to abolish the death penalty is gaining ground worldwide, including in the US and Japan, despite the belligerent tone adopted by some leaders after the September 11th attacks, nun and author Sister Helen Prejean said yesterday.
"It is true the September 11th attack has been a counterforce at some times because Bush moved in the military paradigm, saying (Osama) bin Laden should be sentenced to the death penalty," she said.
"But simultaneously there has been a great awakening of consciousness . . . there is a rapid escalation moving away from the death penalty," said Sister Prejean.