As a general rule, the Times Union identifies adults accused of serious felonies — sexual assault up to and including rape, other forms of physical assault up to and including murder. At the same time, the paper as a general rule doesn’t identify the victims of crime, especially those injured by what’s known as intimate partner violence.
These two guidelines were set against each other earlier this month when Schenectady County reporter Paul Nelson reported on a grand jury’s decision to exonerate Gabriella Beckwith, a 23-year-old mother of three young children who was charged with manslaughter and assault following the July 18 death of her boyfriend, Beyquan Campbell, in their second-floor apartment on Schenectady’s Avenue B.
It was undisputed that Beckwith stabbed Campbell in the leg, severing his femoral artery. The 29-year-old bled out despite the efforts of paramedics.
Our Schenectady correspondent had reported on Beckwith’s arrest and arraignment in the days after the killing, and noted her attorney’s intention to argue that the stabbing was self-defense and that his client was a domestic violence victim. Should that statement alone have prompted us to keep her anonymous? I don’t think so: On the scales of this particular journalistic decision, the weight tips in the direction of the fact that she was charged with manslaughter and more.
Nelson reported a few days later on the decision to allow Beckwith to remain free — albeit with GPS monitoring and the supervision of the county probation department — as investigators explored her self-defense claims, and we once again named her.
And then, after more than seven months of what was surely high anxiety for the defendant, came the news that a grand jury had refused to indict Beckwith, and that Schenectady County District Attorney Robert Carney had presented evidence that Campbell had been “volatile and…
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