The Outsiders
The unofficial leader of Amarillo’s punk scene looked and dressed and acted different. His nonconformity made him an easy target—and it may have kept the football player who killed him from going to jail.
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“We believe that the evidence will convince you beyond a reasonable doubt,” assistant district attorney John Coyle announced to the jury, his arm outstretched as he pointed accusingly at the defendant, “that this was not an accident, that this was not justified, and that the defendant intentionally and knowingly murdered Brian Deneke.” The prosecution would present compelling evidence against Dustin: He had never applied his brakes or turned his steering wheel as his Cadillac had approached Brian, he had fled the scene of the crime, and he had lied to the police. But it was defense attorney Warren Clark who set the tone for the proceedings when he put the punks—and Brian’s character—on trial, transforming the murder case into a wholesale condemnation of the punk scene. “Ladies and gentlemen,” began Clark, a persuasive orator who favors dark suits and theatrical flourishes, “this is not a case of diversity, or tolerance, or judging people by the way they dress. This case is about a gang of young men who choose a lifestyle designed to intimidate those around them, to challenge authority, and to provoke a reaction from others.” Clark contended that when the punks brought bats and chains with them to Western Street, “a conspiracy was put into play . . . to kill and maim these high school students.” His client, he argued, had no other option but to protect the life of his friend, whom he suggested Brian was beating. “[Dustin] had no time to think or ponder. He had to take immediate action and he took it. And if he had to live it over again,” said Clark meaningfully, fixing his gaze on the jury, “he would do it again.”
The prosecution would spend much of its time chipping away at Clark’s assertions: For instance, testimony suggested that it was another boy, John King, not Brian Deneke, who had struck Dustin’s friend in the parking lot. Additionally, Dustin’s cavalier comment—“I’m a ninja in my Caddy”—hardly reflected the state of mind of a panicked teenager trying to save a friend’s life. The jury was riveted by certain moments in the state’s case, as when Jason Deneke described in a low, halting voice how his brother had died in his arms, while those on the punk side of the courtroom openly wept. The trial, however, ultimately belonged to the defense, which sought to establish that Brian was a belligerent teenager prone to violence who was therefore an imminent threat to Dustin and his friends. “I had never seen eyes so cold and dark,” testified Brian’s former Boy Scout troop leader, Tom Scherlen, about an argument they had over a skateboard when Brian was thirteen years old. “He told me that I was a son of a bitch and that he didn’t need to be in my troop anyway.” Police officer Jeff Stephenson, who had arrested Brian for disorderly conduct when he was sixteen, recounted how the teenager had shouted obscenities when police officers tried to clear the street outside a busy punk club. Another officer, at the request of the defense, held up for the jury each item of clothing that Brian had worn on the night of the fight—camouflage pants, combat boots, chains, and a ratty shirt—as well as a photograph of him with a mohawk.
Though such evidence had little to do with the case against Dustin, it served as a powerful reminder to the jury that Brian was a very different sort of teenager than the blond, all-American eighteen-year-old who sat politely before them at the defense table. Dustin had shed the bulky muscularity of his football days, and his sober countenance suggested that he was no longer the class cutup but a responsible teenager on the verge of adulthood. He would not take the stand in his own defense, but his very presence in the courtroom—with his family and friends assembled behind him, evoking a reassuring portrait of middle-class values—spoke louder than any words he could have delivered on his own behalf. It was a point Clark sought to drive home in his vitriolic closing argument, in which he alluded to the “goons” and “thugs” sitting on the opposite side of the courtroom. “What Dustin Camp faced out there,” he thundered, “was a mean drunk with a weapon.…Somewhere in the infinite processes that make a boy into a man, something happened to Brian Deneke…His manner of death was unfortunately the end result of his choices over the last six years prior to his death. You could even argue that he was destined to die the way he did. He was a violent individual. And it took violence on Dustin’s part, Dustin Camp’s part, to put an end to further violence and to save an innocent life.” Clark paused, then pointed toward his client as his voice reached a feverish pitch. “Let this boy go home, and restore him to his family,” he implored, “because he did the right thing.”
After several hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Dustin not of murder, as the prosecution had hoped, but of manslaughter—deciding, in effect, that he had acted recklessly rather than with intent. Both sides seemed equally astonished by the verdict, but they reserved their opinions until the conclusion of the sentencing phase. Manslaughter carries a two- to twenty-year prison sentence, although the jury was also given the option of awarding Dustin probation since he had no criminal record. The defense presented a series of character witnesses who supported leniency: Dustin’s former football coach, who praised him; teachers who described his diligence in the classroom; a friend of his parents’ who declared that “he would make his family, his church, and his community proud”; and the pastor, who described how the Camps had “modeled the godly life before their son.” As witness after witness took the stand to extol his virtues, it was easy to lose sight of the fact that the clean-cut boy behind the defense table had, by taking a life, trespassed the most basic of moral codes. But the image of a now repentant teenager who had fallen from grace was a resonant one, and the jury listened intently when Dustin took the stand to apologize to the Denekes. “It’s a tragic deal that happened, and it shouldn’t have happened,” he declared from the witness box. “After all the pain and agony my friends and family have been through, the Deneke family have been through, I would have gotten out of that car. If I had gotten beaten down with a bat, it would have been better than all this.”
Coyle rose from his chair at the conclusion of the defense’s closing argument and launched into a passionate plea for punishment. At 31, he was an exceptionally young prosecutor, with a round, earnest face that had registered both shock and outrage during the course of the trial; when the medical examiner had described Brian’s injuries—he had been conscious when he was dragged under the wheels of the Cadillac, its impact so severe that his collarbone had been torn free from his shoulder—Coyle had looked visibly shaken. Now he stood before the jury, beseeching them to see the grander purpose behind their decision. “Our young people, on both sides of this aisle in our community…need to be told by the twelve of you that what you do carries consequences…whoever you are, no matter what you look like, no matter how you dress,” he said in a solemn, deliberate voice. “I don’t expect you to enjoy sending this young man to prison, however long you send him for. I expect you to do it with a tear in your eye and your heart in your throat.…President John Kennedy said we do things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. I ask you to do the hard thing. I ask you to send a message to this community that all young people, all of them, will suffer the consequences of their actions, and that you are holding Dustin Camp unconditionally responsible for the death of Brian Deneke.”
The twelve jurors, however, were not swayed; after deliberating for nearly three hours, they sentenced Dustin to ten years’ probation and a $10,000 fine he will not have to pay if he stays on his best behavior. The anguish of those on the right side of the courtroom was tangible; Mike Deneke’s shoulders sank in resigned defeat, his face ashen. Behind him, three rows of teenagers gripped one another’s hands tightly, choking back tears. Coyle stared miserably at the jurors before him, as Dustin turned from the defense table, nodding courteously at his attorney and his parents, before walking out of the courtroom and through the courthouse doors into the bright afternoon sunshine.
NEWS OF THE SENTENCE, WHICH WAS broadcast live from the courthouse late that afternoon, stunned many residents of Amarillo, spurring a deluge of phone calls to local TV stations and stirring debate across the city. Parents took to the airwaves to voice their outrage about the message that such a verdict sent to teenagers in the community, while others simply shook their head in dismay, expressing astonishment that someone convicted of manslaughter would never spend a night in jail. At one hastily organized community meeting at a Unitarian church, several attendees openly wept, and by the time the ten o’clock news aired that evening, anger had reached a fever pitch. “If all you get for murdering someone with your car is ten years’ probation with a felony-free record,” wrote one incensed television viewer in an e-mail that was read on the air, “then I can only ask Mister Camp not to let me see him walking around.” Such bitterness did not wane as the days passed: An Amarillo Globe-News poll revealed that 74 percent of respondents believed that the punishment did not fit the crime, and emotions ran so high that Judge Lopez sealed the list of the jurors’ names out of concern for their safety.
There was little doubt about the message sent by the twelve men and women who sat in judgment that day. It was what the punks felt they knew all along: Teenagers deemed “good kids” could enjoy a sanctioned sort of rambunctiousness in Amarillo without fear of punishment, since a boys-will-be-boys attitude would pardon even their most egregious behavior. Such indulgences, however, did not apply to those who stood on the margins. Had the roles been reversed—if a football player had lost his life that night at the hands of a punk—did anyone believe that a jury would have rendered the same verdict? For punks, teenagers who had never had faith in the system, the outcome of the trial reaffirmed their worst fears, and revealed the true costs of a social order in which some boys are valued more than others.
Many punks, frustrated by the harassment they had received even in the months after the killing, had drifted away from the scene, shaving off their mohawks and dressing in darker, muted clothes. There was, among these teenagers, a deep sense of loss: The Eighth Street House is now uninhabited, a remnant of another time, and punk shows are sparsely attended. Many spoke of moving on—to Austin, Dallas, maybe west to California. Anywhere, they said, where they might feel more at ease. Though they were comforted by the community’s support after the trial, many punks felt that the outrage of adults had arrived too late: Where, they wondered, had the concern of teachers, parents, and even the police been before the verdict became front-page news?
Their questions would go unanswered. Despite a trial that had rocked this city to its core, little had changed: On my last night in Amarillo, I spotted two punks loping along Western Street toward an empty parking lot, their skateboards tucked under their arms. A black pickup stopped at a red light; both its teenage driver and passenger, straining for a better view, rolled down their windows and stared intently at the punks who made their way up the boulevard. As the boys drove off, you could hear—just barely—gales of laughter and a string of obscenities over the squeal of car wheels.
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