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

“There was plenty of evidence that they took part in the planning of the crime and stole Kevin’s car stereo. But Kevin M., Demetrus S., and Richie J. were promised complete immunity as long as they were not the ones who pulled the trigger. They fingered Roy for the murder of Kevin Gardner, and in return they spent not one day in jail.”

The author touches on a trend that recurs throughout her book: When the police investigate more than one person for a particular crime, they often pressure the first suspect who gives a statement to shift culpability to the others. This frequently works to that person’s advantage, providing them with a light sentence or even total immunity. Besides prioritizing expediency over justice, this disadvantages younger people, who often have limited experience with the justice system and don’t know how to take advantage of it as their older accomplices do. In the case of Roy, Nanon, and Napoleon, their very innocence might have contributed to their convictions for capital murder.

“It was a requirement that I had an attorney. He interviewed me. I guess he had in mind I was guilty from the get-go and it was an open-and-shut case, or whatever. He did just what he had to do to get by and no more.”

The US justice system guarantees free legal representation for those who cannot afford an attorney in a criminal case. However, the quality of this representation varies considerably, as this quote from Roy suggests. As the attorney Stevenson notes in Chapter 6, some of the impoverished people he handled appeals for had “horrible representation” in their original trials (186). The difference between an apathetic lawyer and a committed one is especially crucial in a capital murder case, where a human life hangs in the balance.

“Roy told the court that he lied about shooting Gardner ‘so they would leave me alone.’ He felt that the police had already made up their minds that he pulled the trigger. He said he thought a confession was the best thing he could do to make it easy on himself.”

Teenagers’ naivete, inexperience, and unfinished cognitive development make them particularly vulnerable to the duress, manipulation, and intimidation of high-pressure police questioning. Adolescents are far more likely than adults to base their decisions on immediate consequences rather than longer-term ones; studies have identified numerous cases in which teenagers have confessed to murders they did not commit to end the stress of their interrogations. An egregious example is that of the “Central Park Five,” a group of Black and Hispanic youths between ages 14 and 16. Under extreme pressure and coercion, four confessed to a brutal beating and rape in 1989; all were later exonerated of the crime through DNA.

“Nobody’s the same as they were when they first come to the row. They become different people. They are all better. Better people than when they first came to prison. Does that surprise you? I attribute it to reflection.”

Roy puts his finger on a (counterintuitive) trend in Kuklin’s book: The young men she interviews seem unusually thoughtful, sensitive, and empathetic despite having spent years in some of the harshest environments in the country. Roy, for instance, has cultivated a love of literature (Milton, Dante, Shakespeare) and science while in prison. Nanon has authored several books and writes a newsletter about prison life. All appear to have long outgrown the adolescent impulses that led to their arrests and seem to have much to offer society. Nevertheless, as it stands, most of them will probably die in prison.

“I got spoiled on death row.”

This is one of the more surprising statements in Kuklin’s book. In 2001, Roy’s death sentence was commuted to life without parole, yet he now feels nostalgic for death row. As he explains, there was a genuine sense of community there—a lot more reaching out to others—since all of them faced the same fate. Roy found his transition to the general population, full of “short-timers” with no incentive to get along, to be one of the greatest challenges of his life.

“I don’t enjoy life. I try to struggle through it. I got my little pain pills to deal with it. I call my artwork or my music my pain pills. They help me deal with, forget about, the situation for a while. In a way, I feel that I’m cursed and will be till the day I die. I know it’s my fault I’m here. I did it.”

Mark was only 14 when he committed the murder that netted him a life sentence plus 10 years; his extreme young age, coupled with a then-recent Supreme Court decision establishing 16 as the minimum age for capital sentencing, makes him the only prisoner profiled in Kuklin’s book who avoided death row altogether. He is also the only one of the three men Kuklin interviewed who freely discusses his culpability. Mark was a fatherless child from an impoverished home who was manipulated by an idolized big brother into committing a murder. Despite these extenuating circumstances, Mark received one of the harshest sentences in the books, yet he makes no excuses and asks for no sympathy. Far from being a conscienceless predator, he seems to have been excruciatingly aware of the enormity of his crime from the moment he fired the gun: “I realized my life was over” (39).

“Rape was my biggest fear in Donaldson. I mean, full-grown men who had no homosexual characteristics were raping men. They were like animals. I felt like I was living in a zoo and around a bunch of animals.”

As Kuklin points out earlier in this chapter, many states automatically try juveniles as young as 14 as adults if their crimes rise to a certain level of brutality or premeditation. This rote procedure inevitably contributes an extra onus of physical (and psychological) torture to their sentences: e.g., the constant threat of sexual assault by older, stronger prisoners, which certainly seems to define “cruel and unusual punishment.” Mark describes later how his pleas for protective custody were brushed off by the captain of the guards, who told him to “grow up” (55).

“I think the worst thing that hurt me, or touched me, what made me realize where I was at, was when an old man about seventy years old fell down the steps. And when he fell, they would laugh. The whole dorm, laughing. Me, it brought tears to my eyes because this was an old man. And he was hurt. And it brought tears to my eyes, and I realized where the hell I am.”

Earlier, Mark relates how the prison barber was “scared” even to cut his hair due to the nature of his crime. Yet his reaction to the incident above demonstrates sensitivity and empathy, especially compared to his fellow prisoners, many of whom were convicted of lesser crimes. Kuklin hints at the callousness of arbitrary, one-size-fits-all laws and sentencing guidelines, which all too often make no allowances for extenuating circumstances, especially if the perpetrator is impoverished (like Mark) or a person of color.

“If it was up to me, I’d say keep them in a cell. I can’t never say no man is ever above being redeemed. I believe that changes can take place in people. Spiritual changes that can change a person. Changes took place in me.”

Mark ponders how society should deal with seemingly irredeemable prisoners so that other prisoners, not to mention society at large, can be safe from them. Although he was never on death row himself, Mark adamantly opposes the death penalty because he refuses to give up on the humanity of his fellow prisoners or their potential for change. From his own example, he knows that people can grow spiritually, even in the worst of prisons.

“In March 2005, when five of the nine Supreme Court justices agreed that no offender under the age of eighteen was eligible for the death penalty, seventy-one men were supposed to be immediately removed from the nation’s death rows. Four months after this decision, I traveled to Texas to meet a young man who was seventeen when he was sent to death row. He was still there.”

The “wheels of justice” often lag far behind federal decisions that mandate their reform. Some states are very set in their ways. Texas, for instance, executes a higher percentage of its convicts than any other state in the nation; prior to the 2005 Supreme Court decision cited above, that number included 13 juveniles. Additionally, death row in Texas can be a far harsher place than (for instance) its counterpart in Alabama, where Roy was imprisoned. Fortunately, a few months after Kuklin’s first meeting with Nanon, the authorities finally transferred him out of death row.

“In my case, I’m here because I was the only one who refused to give a statement to the police. Another guy even confessed on tape. I refused to take a deal.”

Again, one of Kuklin’s interview subjects exposes the cynicism of the system as practiced by some local police and courts. Older offenders are savvy enough to bargain down their sentences (in this case, from first-degree murder to a simple charge of “drug-dealing”) by agreeing to testify against a younger, more naïve accomplice (Nanon). As a matter of course, the various facets of the justice department collude in this shadowy deal despite the inconsistencies in the case against Nanon and a taped confession by Vaal.

“Most of the time I was at Ellis, I lived in solitary. At the time, you could only stay in solitary a maximum of fifteen days at a time. My time was stacked. What they would do with me and Emerson is take us to solitary for fifteen days, then bring us back to J-21 for one day, then back to solitary.”

Nanon reveals a loophole the prison authorities use to get around rules limiting the use of solitary confinement, which many studies and human rights organizations have decried as cruel and inhumane. The phrase “stacked,” meaning a slippery way of maximizing imprisonment, recurs in Chapter 6, where Stevenson describes how Napoleon’s two accomplices were tricked into testifying against him only to be given “stacked state and federal sentences. […] Each brother would have to serve more than eighty literal years […] before being eligible for parole” (137).

“The more I read, the more I realized how little I knew. […] In school we read about George Washington, Christopher Columbus. We read about white heroes, every black face was a slave, a nobody, unacknowledged. Our sense of self-worth plummeted. I was shocked to read about people like Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois, George Jackson, Angela Davis, Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver, James Baldwin, Cornel West, and so many more. I felt like I found a treasure. I was never taught about these things in school!”

Nanon’s formal education, courtesy of various public and Catholic schools in California and Texas, largely ignored the contributions of African Americans to US history. Only by studying on his own in prison did he find out about the many accomplished Americans who looked like himself. Growing up in California, he admired “the pimp, the prostitute, the hustler on the block” because they earned money for their families (96). In prison, his new role models dramatically broadened his horizons, and he soon followed their lead in becoming a writer. The anecdote illustrates one of the many ways in which systemic racism (in this case, in the educational system) contributes to Race, Injustice, and Capital Punishment.

“As crazy as it sounds, I wouldn’t change anything about my life. I believe in things. […] I could have become a professional athlete who had everything yet believed in nothing. I could have known what I was fighting against, but never known what I was fighting for. I hope you can respect that.”

In high school, Nanon was an accomplished athlete who was being scouted for a career in football. His conviction for capital murder brought an end to all this potential, yet he says he has few regrets: He values the life of the mind and the searching, generous heart he has cultivated in prison more than the lucrative but superficial life he might have had as a professional athlete.

“If the victim had been a low-class citizen, Nap probably would have gotten three years. […] This was the only case where a dude who was seventeen years old, class president, no criminal record, captain of the football team, baseball, track star, got a death sentence.”

In 2002, Jamaal’s brother Napoleon was executed for a murder he allegedly committed at age 17. Jamaal’s hyperbolic remark that Napoleon would have only received three years for murdering a “low-class citizen” makes a point: As Stevenson notes in a later chapter, “If the victim has high status, it is more likely to result in a conviction” (192). In Napoleon’s case, the murder victim was a white man of especially high status, a Texas businessman whose son was a judge on the Fourth US Circuit of Appeals in Virginia. As is often the case, race seems to have been a significant factor in his sentencing: It is hard to imagine that a 17-year-old white boy with Napoleon’s many accomplishments would be sentenced to death for a first offense, however heinous.

“The Missouri court had stayed the date [of Chris Simmons’s execution] so as to wait and see if the United States Supreme Court’s opinion in a case called Atkins v. Virginia (issued a few weeks later) would have an effect upon whether juveniles should be given the death penalty. We had been urging everyone from the trial court to the Court of Criminal Appeals to the Board of Pardons and Paroles and the governor to stop Napoleon’s execution for the same reason.”

The landmark 2005 Supreme Court case Roper v. Simmons finally banned the death penalty for those under 18. During the run-up to the deliberations, Walter Long, who handled Napoleon’s appeals, hoped the state of Texas would extend to his client the same courtesy that Missouri granted Chris Simmons: a stay of execution until the Supreme Court issued its opinion on a related case. “The Court of Criminal Appeals voted against us five to three,” says Long, and “The governor ignored our plea. […] Absolutely nothing could be more brutally and unfairly arbitrary” (152). His remark about the decision’s “arbitrary” nature highlights the way in which location, timing, and other factors unrelated to the crime itself influence a person’s sentencing.

“Dad and Mom tried to figure out what they were going to do with all his things. That was one of the only times in my life that I saw Dad cry. He mentioned that he wanted to keep all of William’s clothes because they still smelled like him. […] We didn’t wash any of William’s laundry for about six months after that. They were just lying in my room.”

Paul Jenkins was 10 years old when his brother William was slain at age 16 in a botched robbery at his place of work. The Jenkins family’s intense grief and rituals of mourning echo (from the other side) the anguish of Napoleon’s family: In each case, a beloved, accomplished brother and son died needlessly. The parallels in the families’ experiences of Death and Mourning implicitly critique capital punishment, suggesting that it simply compounds an already tragic situation.

“I started to shut down the pieces of me that hurt. It was an instinct. It happened without any conscious effort. And the problem is that I shut down so many parts, there was very little left of me. […] I could still feel some happiness, frustration-slash-anger. I could feel some weird sense of joy and complacency when I was satiated with food. But other than that, I basically went through all of my high school years without a soul. I had a lot of friends. I went to parties. But I had no soul.”

Paul’s epiphany about the crushing trauma of his loss recalls the somber words of Jamaal, whose brother was executed by the state of Texas: “Love is worse than hatred. Love will tear you apart. Love will hurt your soul” (131). Families who have lost a child or sibling at a young age, particularly through violence, share a special kinship. The sense of randomness and waste can be uniquely scarring for survivors and can even weaken the bonds of love between them.

“William played guitar. He was left-handed, so he strung the guitar upside down, which I thought was ingenious. He was an artist. He was into a lot of things that I’m into now, which is what I get most upset about when I think of him. He’s the one I could relate to the most, and I can’t even talk to him about the stuff that I’m interested in now. We never had the opportunity to have that bond.”

This quote comes from Mary Jenkins. Much of the heartbreak of losing a loved one at a young age, whether through death or imprisonment, involves the innumerable “what-ifs”: the many years of bonding, learning, and sharing that a moment’s violent action has precluded. There can be little semblance of “closure” for what has been taken away.

“When I was at the hearing, the thing that struck me was that they were the same age as Will. Here were these girls who were like William’s friends. I thought, Can’t we adults do better? I certainly feel that we as a community have failed. I don’t want to sound like a bleeding heart liberal—I’m a Republican—but this is what I believe.”

William’s mother shows her compassion for the teenaged accomplices of her son’s killer—girls who, in other circumstances, might have become his friends. The roots of hopelessness and crime are often social ills like poverty, racism, and lack of education, opportunities, and outreach. Usually, these are the concerns of “liberals,” but Licia—a white Republican—laments that “we adults” (e.g., the state and its social programs) have not done enough to lift up the impoverished.

“After William’s death, I felt that my dad wasn’t there for me. I felt that he wrote the book to make up for not being there. He was trying to convince himself that he was a really good dad. All the focus was drawn to William. It really pissed me off. […] I think it led to the breakup of his marriage to Elise, his second wife. I loved Elise. I blamed Dad for the end of their marriage. Maybe his not being home affected her like it affected me.”

Mary’s words reveal the intricate fissures that can divide a family in the wake of a catastrophic loss. The dynamics of the family often fall apart, eventually resettling, as best as they can, around the void left by the loved one. One source of conflict can be the way family members focus their time and emotional life on the departed—in the form of prolonged grieving, social activism, elaborate gestures of remembrance, etc.—at the expense of the emotional needs of the living.

“We [the Victim Impact Panel] try to put a face on victims as a way to fight crime by beating it at its source. These kids have been victimized again and again and again. There’s a slogan we use: ‘Hurt people hurt people.’”

Bill’s volunteer work for the Victim Impact Panel in Chicago has helped him process the death of his son by seeking to prevent similar tragedies. By sharing the story of his family’s loss with at-risk juveniles, he hopes to change the trajectory of their lives by showing them “what it’s like to be on the other end of the knife” (176). Bill is a fierce opponent of capital punishment.

“I hate violence. There is so much needless, senseless, misguided violence. For me, the gratuitous violence of executing someone, or abusing someone in prison is very, very troubling. Until we do something about poverty, about hopelessness, about despair that feeds violent behavior, we will all be at risk. I’m angry that we tolerate this risk.”

Stevenson, a pro-bono attorney and activist who has represented both Roy and Mark, lost his grandfather at age 16 in a senseless slaying—an incident that changed his life and vocation. Well versed in how poverty, ignorance, and violence can become a vicious circle, Stevenson reserves his own rage for what he sees as a complacent society and justice system that systematically dismiss the needs of the poor and disadvantaged, addressing them only as a dangerous subset to be brutally policed and then abused behind bars. This only perpetuates the ever-widening cycle of violence and trauma.