No Choirboy: Murder, Violence, and Teenagers on Death Row

Kuklin profiles Napoleon Beazley, an African American youth convicted of killing a Texas businessman in a carjacking when he was 17 years old. Kuklin largely draws on interviews with his mother and brother, who still live in the Texas home where Napoleon grew up and whom she interviewed together, allowing them to comment on each other’s thoughts in real-time. For legal context, she also quotes some emails from Napoleon’s lawyer, Walter Long. She could not interview Napoleon himself because he was executed by the state of Texas in 2002, only three years before the US Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for juvenile offenders.

Napoleon’s age and lack of criminal record—he had been a gifted student and athlete—made his death sentence a cause célèbre, triggering what Kuklin calls an international “crusade” against the death penalty. Jamaal, Napoleon’s younger brother, notes Napoleon’s election as class president as well as captain of the football team, adding that no one ever had anything bad to say about him prior to his arrest, an event that shocked their small town.

Arriving at the Beazley home for the interview, Kuklin finds both Jamaal and his mother, Rena, to be warm, inviting people.