- Rick Halperin News

TEXAS: Texas man set to die for killing as a teen

Gerald Mitchell and Napoleon Beazley both were 17 when they fatally gunned down people. Both acknowledge their crimes. Both were sent to death row.

In August, Beazley received a reprieve hours before he was to be put to death for killing the father of a federal appeals court judge, the result of protests by groups like Amnesty International who are against the death penalty for convicted teen-agers.

No such attention has been given to Mitchell, who quietly awaits his October 22 execution for a shooting and robbery in Houston. Now 33, he says he doesn't want to die -- but he's comfortable with the lack of lobbying.

"A lot of publicity isn't too good for you, really," Mitchell said in a recent interview.

Human rights groups acknowledge they've been somewhat sidetracked by the September 11 terrorist attacks, but they insist they will continue to pursue the issue.

"It will not be a quiet case," promised Rick Halperin of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

 "We're just kind of running behind," said Sue Gumanwardena-Vaughn, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International USA.

 The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stopped Beazley's execution after his lawyers filed a last-minute appeal that cited the young age of the high school class president and star athlete from a well-regarded east Texas family.

 The same court Wednesday denied an appeal from Mitchell, whose history is far more checkered: He had a juvenile crime record and supposedly has fathered 7 children with 6 women.

 In Mitchell's appeal, his attorneys cited his age at the time of conviction and an international prohibition against such teen-age executions.

 The attorneys said they are prepared to take fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 1989 that a defendant's constitutional rights were not violated when the death sentence was imposed on a murder convict who was at least 16 at the time of the offense.

 Mitchell would be the 19th U.S. prisoner to be executed since 1976 for a murder committed when the killer was younger than 18. He would be the 10th in Texas, the nation's most active death penalty state, where he is among 31 death row inmates who were 17 at the time of their crime.

 Congress never has ratified the provision in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which bars giving the death sentence to anyone under 18 at the time of the offense.

 Confined to his cell 23 hours a day, Mitchell writes music and poetry and says he has become wiser.

 "I was young, I didn't care about living," he said. "I was full of hate, full of rage. I really can't explain why. I was attracted to the wild side, the street life where you're trying to make a name for yourself."

 His father has since been shot to death, his brother has gone to federal prison for bank robbery and his mother has been put on probation for drug charges.

 Mitchell, who never got beyond the 10th grade, was arrested as a juvenile for robbery, burglary and taking a pistol to school. He wound up in a youth detention center, then hit the streets again with a gun.

 On June 4, 1985, Charles Anthony Marino, 20, was fatally shot with a sawed-off shotgun after he and his brother-in-law tried to buy $1 worth of marijuana from Mitchell, court records show. Marino was also robbed of $25 and his 1980 Pontiac.

 Witnesses at Mitchell's trial said he left the house laughing.

 Later the same day, Mitchell shot and killed Hector Munguia, 18, while trying to rob him of his necklace. He was convicted at a separate trial.

 "One thing led to another," Mitchell said of the murders. "I think about it every day."

 Prosecutor Doug Davis still recalls details of the Marino case and says he had no reservations about asking for the death penalty for Mitchell.

 "This guy was so bad -- the jury came back with verdict a pretty quickly, especially considering his age," he said.

 In a letter to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, which could recommend to Gov. Rick Perry that his sentence be commuted to life in prison, Mitchell wrote: "I have come so very long a way since the year of that mentally disturbed and unsettled 17-year-young person. I have truly matured."