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

In 1994, Roy, an African American youth, was convicted of capital murder in the state of Alabama for the slaying and robbery of a fellow 16-year-old. Overriding the jury’s 10-2 vote for a sentence of life imprisonment without parole, the judge sentenced Roy to death.

The first of Kuklin’s interview subjects in No Choirboy, Roy defies readers’ likely expectations of a juvenile offender (let alone a death row inmate): He came from a fairly stable, middle-class family, was very close to his father, and had no serious disciplinary problems before his arrest for murder. At his trial and in his interviews with Kuklin, Roy denies committing the murder. His taped confession, he says, was coerced; Kuklin cites evidence that it was one of his accomplices who pulled the trigger. The expedient, even cynical, modus operandi of police interrogations and deals for immunity that landed Roy on death row establishes a pattern that recurs throughout Kuklin’s book.

While in county jail awaiting trial, Roy earned his GED, and the sheriff allowed him to attend his graduation ceremony in cap and gown (and no handcuffs), a kindness that Roy still treasures. In a grateful letter to the sheriff, Roy vowed to “do whatever I can to better myself” (15). Roy made good on that promise, becoming well-read (Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, and magazines such as Scientific American) and comes across as thoughtful in his interviews. Looking back on the crime that led to his conviction, he acknowledges that he was a “coward” and an “ass.” Like the other incarcerated young men Kuklin interviews, he seems far from the image of the remorseless “monster” conjured up by some proponents of the death penalty.

The sole white prisoner featured in Kuklin’s book, Mark was only 14 when he was arrested for capital murder. As with Roy, this seems the result of his association with older criminals—in this case, Mark’s own relatives. A fatherless child, Mark was coerced by his older brother (a prison guard whom he revered as a father figure) into murdering a man who was criminally involved with the family. Despite these mitigating circumstances and his extreme youth, very little leniency was extended to him by the judge, who sentenced him to life plus 10 years. Mark’s impoverished background was likely a factor in this harsh sentencing.

Meanwhile, Kuklin suggests that the bureaucratic absurdities of the social welfare system were part of what landed Mark in the situation to begin with: When Mark was 13, his mother falsely charged him with assault because that was the only way she could get him counseling for his behavior. Kuklin implies that this institutional indifference, which saddled Mark with a spurious record of violence, carries over into the prison system. Mark notes that the possession of an extra plastic spoon or roll of toilet paper can get one written up for “contraband,” creating the impression that one had a weapon or drugs.

Also like Roy, Mark reveals himself to be reflective and compassionate. In Mark’s case, this manifests partly as an absence of self-justification: “I accept the fact that I’m going to pay the consequences for what I did. I killed a man” (36). Soon after arriving at Donaldson maximum security prison, he witnessed an elderly prisoner falling down a flight of stairs, to the mocking laughter of the other prisoners. Mark refers to this as the “worst thing” he experienced in prison, more upsetting to him than the many beatings and threats of rape he endured. Like Kuklin’s other interview subjects, he shows every sign of having matured into a considerate, talented, conscientious young man. Nevertheless, it will be many years before the state will consider releasing him from prison for the murder he committed at age 14.

Nanon is perhaps the most accomplished of the three prisoners Kuklin interviewed. The author of several books, plus a long-running newsletter that profiles death row inmates, Nanon exhibits ambition, compassion, and potential (and thus, indirectly, the callousness of a judicial system that tries promising, often brilliant juveniles as adults). As with the other subjects of Kuklin’s books, race and social class undoubtedly factored heavily in these prosecutorial decisions.

A star athlete prior to his arrest at 17, Nanon won national recognition for his success at football, at one time being scouted by colleges. He earned good grades and excelled at track, soccer, and baseball as well. However, his mother eventually could not afford the tuition at his Catholic school and transferred him to a crime-ridden public school. Feeling adrift, Nanon turned to drug-dealing to help support his family, which led to a drug-related slaying in a secluded park. As with Roy and Napoleon, the police and older accomplices seem to have exploited Nanon’s youthful naivete by pinning the murder on him. Nanon refused to plead guilty to avoid a death sentence and was sent to death row in 1995.

With his mixed racial background (mostly Black, but also Indian and French) Nanon felt isolated by his reddish complexion, which did not match those of the main racial groups in prison. Though heavily muscled, he was terrified: “I knew that this was no place for a boy” (107). To put up a tough “shield,” he got into fights, often with guards, and spent many months in solitary confinement. With so much time to himself, he discovered reading and soon learned for the first time about the many accomplishments of African Americans. Inspired, he began to write his books about prison life.

In 2005, the Supreme Court decision Roper v. Simmons declared the death sentence for juveniles to be unconstitutional. However, when Kuklin first met Nanon four months later, he was still on death row: another example of institutional indifference. Not until two months later would he finally be transferred to the general population.

Napoleon, a popular high school student and athlete, was sent to death row at age 17 for the murder of Texas businessman John Luttig during a bungled carjacking. In Kuklin’s book, he appears only through trial records, newspaper accounts, and the words of his attorney and heartbroken relatives; he was executed by the state of Texas in 2002, three years before the Supreme Court decision that would have saved him. Walter Long, his attorney, points out an instance of arbitrary callousness that contributed to his death: The Texas governor and the Court of Criminal Appeals refused to stay his execution, even though the Supreme Court was pondering a case that had direct relevance to his own.

The Baldus Study concluded that the US has imposed the death penalty far more often on Black defendants than on white defendants charged with similar crimes, and that a defendant charged with killing a white victim is over four times as likely to be executed as one charged with the murder of a Black victim. The case of Napoleon Beazley illustrates both conclusions, as well as the broader relationships between Race, Injustice, and Capital Punishment. Not only was Napoleon class president, captain of the football team, and an honor roll student, but he had no criminal record prior to his arrest. His alleged victim, however, was an affluent white man and the father of a federal judge. As Napoleon’s mother opines, “The death sentence was revenge” (136).

Described by Kuklin as “a soft bear of a man with warm, bashful eyes” (131), Jamaal was nine years old when his brother Napoleon was sent to death row for capital murder. Napoleon never discussed the crime with his family, so Jamaal had to struggle with the mystery of how his beloved older brother could have become involved in such a brutal act. It had a profound effect on his personality, he says, making him a “loner.” Nevertheless, Jamaal did not stop admiring Napoleon. In some ways, his respect for his brother increased while he was on death row due to the strength and equanimity Napoleon showed during those eight long years. Jamaal thinks that, in his brother’s place, he might have killed himself. Particularly vexing was that the brothers were never allowed to touch during visits. Only at Napoleon’s wake was Jamaal able, for the first time in eight years, to touch his brother.

Kuklin describes Rena, Napoleon’s mother, as an “appealing, no-nonsense woman with an earthy laugh and inviting smile” (130). Her words reveal her to be just as perplexed and haunted as Jamaal by Napoleon’s incomprehensible act, the circumstances of which she calls “eerie.” She believes that in view of Napoleon’s lack of a criminal record, the courts should have handled his case with more leniency, and she still harbors rage over the capital murder charges, suggesting that it was an act of “revenge” (Napoleon’s alleged victim was the father of a judge). Despite everything, she sees herself as a better person than she was before Napoleon’s arrest and execution—perhaps simply because she is older and wiser. Napoleon’s fate has made her more empathetic to the plight of the thousands of condemned prisoners lingering on America’s death rows. She no longer believes they all deserve to be there.

Paul was 13 when his brother William, then 16, was murdered in 1997 in a botched robbery. The loss left Paul with indelible psychological scars. For several years, he instinctively “shut down” his emotional responses as a means of coping, until he had “no soul” (160). Paul’s heartache and rage recall those of Napoleon’s survivors, suggesting that the death penalty, often touted as a source of solace for the families of murder victims, creates only another legacy of trauma, as well as Death and Mourning.

Paul feels mostly pity for his brother’s killers, a trio of African American youths from impoverished backgrounds. Two were teenagers and not too different from some of William’s friends. The 23-year-old who pulled the trigger, Paul says, “threw his life away” in that random instant (172). Paul would like to contact him personally to express his forgiveness and sympathy, but the prison will not forward his letters or allow him to visit. Paul and the rest of his family adamantly oppose capital punishment, which is why William’s killer was able to secure a life sentence without parole rather than death.

Mary was 10 years old when her brother was killed. A large part of her grief resides in her sense of how similar his creative interests and outlook were to her own: “He’s the one I could relate to the most” (162). When she looks back on all the time with him that was stolen from her, years when they might have played guitar together or discussed art, she feels a terrible sadness over that lost bond. The senseless waste of young life is a theme throughout Kuklin’s book.

Mary went through a period when she was very angry at her father for, as she saw it, “abandoning” her and other loved ones to nurture his own grief, which took the form of victims’ rights activism and memory projects centered around his dead son. Gradually, she has become more sympathetic to his desire to work through his anguish by counseling strangers. One of his pet projects is the Victim Impact Panel, which allows him to meet with youthful offenders—ones who have not committed murder—and try to sensitize them to the terrible human toll a violent crime can leave behind. “That’s why I think the death penalty is such a horrible thing,” she says. “Everybody has parents. Mom and Dad lost their son, and someone else was going to lose their son if ‘justice’ was carried out” (166).