Chapter 4

This chapter is much shorter than all of the others, and offers a completley new approach. The author does a report on a man named Napoleon Beazley, who was already executed by the Death Penalty. Instead of getting feedback from the suspect, Susan Kuklin goes to Napoleon's old house to interview his mom and younger brother about the story behind Napoleons murder. Napoleons brother, Jamaal, and his mom, Rena, made some pretty strong allegations that pointed fingers at the people that ran his trial. First of which, in the beggining of the interview, Jamaal makes the claim that had his brother not killed the father of a Supreme Court justice, and rather a low-class citizen, he would have only gotten three years in jail. Napoleons laywer goes on to say that race was an additional factor in his trial. He then critisizes the court for choosing a juror who at the time was president of the local branch of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and gives her a racist title. Bottom line, Napoleon took the life of another human being, and was punished to the full extent of the law. In a crime as survere as murder, exscuses should not be made about the person he was, but rather what he did.