Families of two boys -- one slain, one accused -- share grief

Two couples who feel each other's pain are grieving for sons -- one for their slain boy, the other for the youth who will soon be tried for killing him.

BY SUSANNAH A. NESMITH AND LISA ARTHUR

Twice a week, Kathy and Manny Hernandez trek to a jail in western Miami-Dade County. They wait in the grim green lobby to go through a metal detector and two sets of locked doors. Then, for just an hour, they talk with their son through a plexiglass divider.

Four years after Michael Hernandez confessed to killing a schoolmate, Jaime Gough, in a bathroom at Southwood Middle School, the Hernandezes know that gates and guards may keep them apart from their only son for the rest of their lives.

Maria and Jorge Gough make a different pilgrimage to visit their son, heading to the cemetery where Jaime is buried. Maria goes almost daily. She has found comfort there, as she and Jorge cope with the grief in their lives.

Michael's trial is set to begin later this month, and as the date nears, each family grieves for the other.

''I've cried for her,'' Maria said of Kathy. ``I have tried to understand the magnitude of her suffering, but I can't because I've never had a child in jail. And she can't understand the magnitude of my suffering because she's never had a child die.

``We are both suffering, just differently.''

Said Kathy:

``I cried all day Mother's Day for both of us. I'm sure she didn't have a good day, just like I didn't have a good day. I know they're good people. Nobody deserves to have their child go to school and not come home.

``We both lost a son that day.''

Not in dispute is the horror that happened the morning of Feb. 3, 2004. Michael, then 14, lured his buddy and classmate Jaime Gough, also 14, into a bathroom stall in the Palmetto Bay school and stabbed him 40 times.

Michael's attorney, Richard Rosenbaum, will argue that the boy was insane at the time and blame the crime on his mental illness. Prosecutors say Michael, 18, knew that what he had done was wrong and should be punished with a life sentence.

For the Goughs, the trial is an epilogue, the final chance to see justice for Jaime. For the Hernandezes, frustrated that their child is being treated like a monster, it is a final chance to save their son.

THE GOUGHS

Maria Gough often goes to the cemetery in the early evening, after the gates are locked. She slips her petite body through a split-rail fence to reach her son's grave.

''I like to come this time of day,'' she said one evening as the setting sun bathed the grave markers in soft light. ``It's not so hot.''

She sat on the grass and patted the bronze marker. She closed her eyes.

The peaceful moment belies the turmoil that Maria and Jorge have gone through since Jaime's death.

Jaime was a gentle boy who loved butterflies and the Marlins, played the violin, drew pictures of angels, and collected Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. His violent death left the Goughs so overwhelmed by anger and grief that they retreated into their own pain and couldn't support each other.

''When you are feeling that kind of grief, you have no patience,'' said Jorge, 45. ``We were both hurting so much, we almost got divorced.''

Maria began to attend support groups for grieving parents. Jorge couldn't understand how surrounding themselves with suffering could possibly help.

They disagreed about when to give Jaime's clothes away. Jorge thought six months was the right time. Maria wanted to keep the clothes and hang on to Jaime's lingering scent.

''I could go in his room and hug his things and smell him,'' said Maria, 44. ``. . . It was my son, right there, and I could hold on to him.''

Even sleep became an issue.

''I didn't sleep for a year -- more -- afterwards,'' Maria said.

Jorge slept through the night. It made Maria crazy. ''She thought I wasn't suffering enough,'' Jorge said.

Jorge considered leaving. But he had to think of Brenda, Jaime's younger sister, who had always been daddy's little girl.

''She looks up to me,'' Jorge said.

His resolve to stay was tested when Maria told him she wanted to visit the bathroom where Jaime died.

''It was the last place my son had life,'' Maria said, beginning to cry. ``I needed to see it.''

Jorge resisted.

'I thought, `My God, Maria, who would want to go to such a place?' '' he said. ``But my pastor told me I should go with her and support her. I had to learn people grieve differently. I didn't know that.''

And so they went. Jorge said his head felt as though it would explode on the walk up to the bathroom. When they got inside and saw the cramped stall where Jaime had fought for his life, they fell into each other's arms and broke down.

''We cried and cried,'' Jorge said.

The moment was a turning point.

''Everything changed after that,'' Jorge said.

He began to go to support groups with Maria, even though he remained skeptical. Eventually, he admitted finding solace and strength through the groups.

When Maria told him she wanted to start her own group with a friend whose son had died, Jorge supported her.

Oasis, a bereavement group for parents who have lost children, marked its first anniversary on May 1. The Goughs held a celebration at their church, The Miami Temple, in Kendall. The service featured testimony from several people helped by the group, including a man whose son had died just a month earlier.

''I don't know what I would have done without Jorge's help to make it this far,'' the man said, his voice cracking.

Jorge and Maria don't know where they would be without having the group to pour their grief into.

''I didn't look for this,'' Maria said. 'God put this in front of me and said, `You can do this, and help others, or you can decide not to.' ''

They want to expand the group in the coming year, spreading Oasis' work to other churches in South Florida. Their other hope is to secure grant money so they can help families pay for funeral costs.

When Jaime died, they had no money for a funeral.

''I was at the funeral home the day after, and they told me how much it would be,'' Jorge recalled, his eyes welling up with tears and his face grimacing as all the pain flashed through his mind. ``I said I don't have that money.''

Their friends, family and the community rallied around them.

Now they want to give back.

''We want to make sure no family faces that moment without knowing there is Oasis to help them,'' Jorge said.

THE HERNANDEZES

As the Goughs arranged Jaime's funeral, Kathy and Manny Hernandez arranged to visit their son behind bars for the first time.

''At that point, we didn't know if he hated us, if we had done something. . . . Did he think we didn't love him?'' Kathy recalled.

Both parents cried. Michael didn't.

''We were trying to find out the reasons why, why did this happen,'' Manny said.

Michael didn't offer his parents an explanation.

''Initially, he was so out of touch with reality, I think he thought this was a big adventure, being in jail,'' Kathy said. ``He was just fascinated with being handcuffed.''

They have visited him hundreds of times.

''It's awful. To see your child growing up in prison, it's heartbreaking,'' said Kathy, who is horrified that her son could spend life in prison.

''Life in prison for a child means until he dies,'' she said.

They've appealed -- without success -- to juvenile justice groups, mental health advocates and civil rights organizations to help Michael.

The couple have spent the past four years trying to comprehend the horrific thing their son had done, reexamining every moment of the weeks and months before the killing.

Court documents and statements to police by teachers, neighbors and friends confirm his parents' impression that Michael appeared to be a typical, albeit quirky, adolescent. He was a whiz at school and popular with the other kids. The only trouble he had in class was talking too much, pestering girls, not always paying attention.

In October 2003, his parents noticed that Michael was becoming fixated on certain things. Much of it seemed harmless, even normal for his age, like watching horror movies, collecting knives and making sure that his older sister hadn't swiped his CDs.

Others were bizarre, however. He would stare at the grandfather clock at certain times of day. He started to count the items daily in the refrigerator and freezer, and open and close the garage door a specific number of times before going to bed.

Kathy wondered if Michael had obsessive-compulsive disorder, and the couple considered taking him to a therapist. They say friends talked them out of it, assuring them that Michael was going through a phase.

If his mind was spiraling out of his control, Michael concealed it from everyone.

Until his arrest on a charge of murder.

His journal and information found on his computer after Jaime's death suggest that Michael was deeply disturbed, and even he sensed it.

The journal included odd to-do lists with tasks running the gamut from ''do homework projects perfectly'' and ''read bible every day'' to ''learn to be a pimp'' and ``switch pens every two weeks.''

He set goals for himself and went back and checked them off, or wrote ''fail'' and ''failure'' in big letters next to the ones he felt he hadn't accomplished.

Then there was the hit list, a list of people he planned to kill -- Jaime Gough; his older sister, Christina; and another classmate, A.D.M, who is expected to testify at the trial. One journal page detailed The Plan, a step-by-step scheme to lure the boys into a bathroom at school and kill them, and then pose their bodies on the toilet.

''I thought that he was very sick and he must have been suffering so much and . . . we didn't know it,'' Kathy said of the couple's reaction to reading the journal after his arrest.

''He had none of the classic signs you read about -- cruelty to animals, setting fires, wetting his bed,'' Kathy said.

His parents would later learn that their son was also cutting himself as punishment for not completing tasks.

It didn't stop there. Michael downloaded descriptions of serial killers, bomb-making manuals and pictures of decapitated bodies.

But Michael sensed that something was wrong, diagnosing himself with mental illness after researching bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsiveness and self-mutilation on the Internet.

A defense psychologist who diagnosed Michael with paranoid schizophrenia said he was insane at the time of the killing. Miami-Dade jail officials recently put him on psychotropic medication designed to quiet the voices in a schizophrenic person's head.

Prosecution experts say Michael has a personality disorder but doesn't meet the criteria for being legally insane.

None of the psychologists who have examined Michael found any evidence that he was ever abused by his parents or anyone else, or that he suffered any trauma, emotional or physical.

On the day of the killing, after first denying any involvement, Michael concocted a strange story about an older kid killing Jaime while Michael helped. Then he admitted he had made that up and confessed.

Michael sounds calm in a taped confession, matter-of-factly admitting he knew that what he had done was wrong and saying he had no regrets.

The lengthy interrogation outraged Michael's parents.

''He should have had one or both of us there,'' Manny said. ``A child is not in a position to waive their rights, a mentally ill child.''

The Hernandezes' only hope now is that Michael is found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to a mental health institution for treatment.

''I think Michael deserves a second chance,'' Manny said. ``I think he can be helped. To me, he's a good boy that did something horrific. He's still our child. We still love him.''

He and his wife know that even a not-guilty verdict won't end their nightmare. Michael will still be mentally ill, and he will still need help.

''It's just never going to be over,'' Kathy said. ``This is our life sentence.''

IN THE COURTROOM

The Hernandezes and the Goughs -- who had met Michael and his parents only once before the incident -- plan to attend the trial. Both couples are steeling themselves for a painful experience.

The Hernandezes are angry that their son wasn't offered some sort of plea deal that would have avoided a trial.

''I don't know what anybody's going to gain from this,'' Kathy Hernandez said. ``To put both families through this, to open all those wounds again, what is that accomplishing?''

The Goughs say they want to let the system do its job. The Miami-Dade School Board agreed to a $1.7 million wrongful-death settlement, but money doesn't equal justice. They've both forgiven Michael, they said. There is no hatred toward him, but they say that for Jaime's sake, he has to pay for what he did.

''We know it will be hard to sit through this,'' Jorge Gough said. ``I don't say I want Michael to die in jail. But he has to pay for what he did. But it is not for me to judge. What happens is up to God and the jury.''

''I don't know who it will be more difficult for, me or her,'' Maria Gough said, referring to Kathy. ``I know that both families are going to suffer a lot.''

Lionel Tate's attorney running for Fort L commish

Jim Lewis, an attorney who lives in Fort Lauderdale's Harbour Inlet neighborhood, filed his paperwork to run for City Commission District IV, the south part of the city. Commissioner Cindi Hutchinson represents that district right now, but she is in her third term and can't run for the seat. She is running for mayor.

(Mayor Jim Naugle is also term limited; we're not sure what he's doing next. Will someone please ask him to start taking my calls again?!)

Lewis wants "a cleaner, greener, and leaner Fort Lauderdale,'' and is vowing to take no campaign contributions from developers or lobbyists.

Lewis represented Lionel Tate in his murder trial. Tate was tried as an adult for the murder of a 6-year-old playmate. He was the youngest American sentenced to life in prison. Later he was set free, but is back in prison for his involvement in the 2005 robbery of a pizza delivery man.

"Can I please be known for something else?,'' Lewis asked when the subject of Tate was brought up.

Lewis has run unsuccessfully for judge and state Legislature. He also ran for mayor against Naugle in 1994, and lost.

Keep reading to find out more about his candidacy. I'm posting the press release he sent us.

Press release from Lewis campaign:

JIM LEWIS ANNOUNCES CANDIDACY FOR FORT LAUDERDALE CITY COMMISSION, DISTRICT 4
Fort Lauderdale attorney, Jim Lewis, age 50, has filed to run for the Fort Lauderdale City Commission, District 4. The seat is being vacated by Cindi Hutchinson and the election is set for February, 2009.

Jim is a 20 year resident of Fort Lauderdale and a 10 year resident of the Harbour Inlet neighborhood. He has a B.A. Degree in public administration from the University of Central Florida (1978) and a law degree from Stetson University (1980).
Jim’s work experience includes being a local prosecutor, a special prosecutor for former Governor Bob Graham and as an Assistant Statewide Prosecutor for the Florida Attorney’s General Office. Jim has also been an Adjunct Professor of Law at Nova Southeastern University since 1990.

Jim Lewis stated “I’m running for the city commission because I want a cleaner, greener, and leaner Fort Lauderdale, I’m going to spread my message of controlled growth, cleaner waterways and fiscal responsibility. In the spirit of being environmentally responsible I’ve bought myself a scooter, and I plan on scootering through the neighborhoods of District 4 to run a grass roots campaign. I am pledging not to spend over $10,000.00 on this campaign and I will not accept any campaign contributions from developers or lobbyists”.

“I’m also committed to resolving the ugly labor dispute between the city and its police. I want our police to be well staffed, equipped, trained and paid but I do not approve of the current tactics of the Fraternal Order of Police, (negative billboards and threatening work slowdowns).”

“I want former Fort Lauderdale residents who have left for the Western suburbs of Broward County to come back and live and invest in Fort Lauderdale. We don’t need more, we need better. Let’s tear up a few unused city parking lots and turn them into nature friendly playgrounds. Let’s do something about our beaches having to be closed because of bacteria and waterways that continue to be polluted.”
“We don’t need more high density developments, we need neighborhood improvement supported by better schools, green space, water-saving landscapes, and recreational opportunities”.

“These lean economic times also dictate that we cut government waste. City departments need to be streamlined to offer more efficient government services.”

Jim Lewis is divorced with 4 children and a South Side Little League baseball coach.
The campaign office is located at:

200 Southeast 6th Street, Suite 102, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
Telephone 954.523-4081
Cell phone 954.907.2788

Judge Denies Motion To Delay Teen's Murder Trial

Michael Hernandez Trial Will Begin May
If Convicted, Hernandez Faces Life In Prison

MIAMI (CBS4) ― A Miami judge has rejected a motion that would have delayed next months trial of a South Florida teen accused of stabbing a classmate to death when the boys were both in grade school.

''I'm only sure of a few things - we have to pay taxes on April 15, we all will die one day and that this case is going to trial on May 19,'' said Miami-Dade Circuit Judge John Schlesinger.

Tuesday an attorney for 19-year old Michael Hernandez submitted a motion to delay the trial because the teen was recently put on new medication and one of the psychiatrists they planned to use as a defense expert would be unable to give an opinion on his mental state without a full re-examination over a period of weeks.

Hernandez's attorney, Richard Rosenbaum, plans to argue that the boy was insane when he killed Jamie Gough in a rest room at Southwood Middle School in 2004.

Rosenbaum says Hernandez is an obsessive compulsive, mentally disturbed boy, who did not have the capacity to understand what he was doing when he confessed to police about Gough's murder.

Charged as an adult, Hernandez could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted.

Child welfare advocates have argued that children who commit horrible crimes should not be treated or punished as adults because they think, act and perceive the world differently than adults and that confessions probably are made in a state of confusion.

Psychologist Barry Rosenthal of Fordham University says that almost one month before the death of Jamie Gough, Hernandez displayed "bizarre behavior". He said, "Michael created a rigid schedule down to chewing snacks in school, the time he would have to go to bed, how many times he would circle the cul de sac on his bike." Rosenthal then said Michael started "punishing himself for violations of his schedule that gradually increased to cutting himself".

A psychiatrist for the prosecution has admitted that the boy had some bizarre behaviors but his thinking is logical and he is in his right mind to comprehend what he has allegedly done.

Supreme Court turns down boy killer's appeal

By Bill Mears
CNN Supreme Court Producer

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An imprisoned killer who was 12 years old when he committed a double murder, and then was given a 30-year sentence, was denied a hearing by the Supreme Court Monday.

Christopher Pittman's defenders argued the sentence was excessive for someone that age and claim heavy doses of antidepressants he was taking at the time sent his mind spinning out of control.

Now 19, Pittman was convicted three years ago of killing his grandparents with a shotgun as they slept, then setting the house on fire.

The county prosecutor in South Carolina argued it "was as malicious a murder as you're ever going to find."

The justices, without comment, refused to intervene. At issue was whether the state properly used its discretion to try Pittman as an adult, whether the sentence was excessive, and whether mitigating factors should apply.

Outside a death-penalty context, the high court has offered little recent guidance on how to treat underage defendants.

Pittman's lawyers argued no other inmate in the United States is serving so severe a sentence for a crime committed at such an early age.

The inmate's legal team, from the University of Texas Law School, expressed disappointment at the high court's refusal to accept the case.

Michele Deitch, an attorney and adjunct professor, speculated the justices may "have recognized a growing national trend against sentencing young children to harsh mandatory terms in prison, and wants to give state legislatures the opportunity to correct this problem before it rules on the issue."

Deitch and other lawyers worked on the case for free, since Pittman could not afford to pay the extensive legal costs.

Pittman, now 6 foot 2 inches tall, works grounds maintenance at an adult correctional facility outside Columbia, South Carolina. He received a GED high school equivalency in 2006.

With the high court's denial of his appeal, Pittman has few legal options to have his sentence reduced. Under his current sentence, he would be released from prison in his mid-40s. He has a separate civil lawsuit against the state, alleging his court-appointed trial lawyers were ineffective.

At the time of the crime, the boy had bounced around homes for years, experiencing a half dozen family splits and divorces after his mother had twice abandoned him as a child. She has not been in Pittman's life for years.

Joe Pittman, the boy's father, raised Christopher Pittman and his sister for much of their lives, but the relationship between father and son deteriorated. A state psychologist later testified this was a "young man who'd had difficulty with the adults in his life."

After threatening to harm himself and suffering other emotional incidents, the boy was diagnosed as clinically depressed. His lawyers said Pittman was then given Paxil, a mild antidepressant no longer recommended for those under 18.

In the midst of these episodes, the youngster was allowed to live temporarily with his paternal grandparents in Chester County, about halfway between Columbia, South Carolina, and Charlotte, North Carolina. The family said Joe and Joy Pittman had been a source of stability for young Christopher earlier in his life.

On November 28, 2001, Pittman was sent home early for fighting in school and sent to bed by the grandparents. The boy claimed his "Pop-Pop" also beat him with a belt as punishment.

Christopher later admitted taking a pump-action shotgun and shooting his grandparents to death in their bedroom shortly before midnight. Prosecutors said he then set the house on fire to cover his tracks, took the family SUV, his golden retriever and a cache of weapons, and fled.

He was arrested hours later on a remote gravel road in a nearby county.

Just days before, a doctor had begun prescribing Zoloft, another antidepressant. The family contends the abrupt substitution of drugs caused a bad chemical reaction, triggering violent outbursts.

At trial, a parade of psychiatrists offered conflicting testimony on whether the boy's emotional problems excused his criminal behavior. Prosecutors called the Zoloft defense a "smokescreen."

The jury took less than a day to find Pittman guilty. Because he had been transferred from juvenile to adult court, the judge was not allowed to take his age into account at sentencing. Pittman received the shortest possible term for murder, 30 years without parole.

Juror Steven Platt later told CNN the crime appeared deliberate. "It always seemed like the defense was grasping at straws," he said. "Just because you take prescription medicine doesn't mean you can't be held accountable for your actions."

Pfizer, the maker of Zoloft would not comment on the current appeal, but said after the verdict the drug "didn't cause his [Pittman's] problems, nor did the medication drive him to commit murder. On these two points, both Pfizer and the jury agree."

The Food and Drug Administration in 2004 ordered Zoloft and other such medications to carry warnings of an increased risk of suicidal behavior in children.

Pittman's sister, Danielle Pittman Fincher, said afterward, "I know for a fact that there is no absolutely no possible way my brother in his current state of mind could have done something like that."

South Carolina officials refused a CNN request to interview Pittman behind bars. And state prosecutor Barney Giese's office would not comment while the appeal was pending.

The Supreme Court in 2005 banned the death penalty for underage killers. The justices in that case cited evolving "national standards" as a reason to ban such executions.

Among Pittman's defenders is his maternal grandmother, Delnora Duprey, who travels from her central Florida home once a month to visit Pittman on weekends. She describes a young man who, despite his situation, is coping remarkably well.

"He's working ahead with his life, taking classes," Duprey told CNN recently. "He doesn't feel sorry for himself, but he'd like a chance at moving out of prison and getting a new start for himself."

Along with a network of friends and pro bono lawyers from the University of Texas Law School, Duprey is critical of South Carolina's decision to hold the boy for more than three years before trial, much of it in prisons they say were inappropriately dangerous for someone Pittman's age.

Attorney Michael Sturley said 41 states do not punish 12-year-olds as South Carolina does. And none has allowed as harsh a sentence as Pittman was given.

"There are no 12-year-old monsters," said Duprey. She said Pittman recently told her, " 'Grandma, I think God forgives me. Nana and Pop-Pop' -- that's what he called them -- 'forgive me. But I don't think I'll ever forgive myself.' "

There was no immediate comment from Duprey or Pittman's lawyers to the denial of his Supreme Court appeal.

State metes living death penalties to children

By MARIA E. CASTAGLIUOLO
FLORIDA VOICES

If children are the future, then why is Florida locking up adolescent offenders in adult prisons and throwing away the key?

Florida has 713 child inmates who have received adult sentences of 10 years or more for crimes committed before their 17th birthdays. The breakdown of the 713 childhood inmates based on age at the time of the offense is four 12-year-olds; 10 13-year-olds; 60 14-year-olds; 179 15-year-olds; and 460 16-year-olds. Of those 713 children, 122 are serving life without the possibility of parole for crimes committed before their 17th birthdays. These 122 children have been sentenced to a living death penalty.

It is unlikely that every 15-year-old who has committed a crime, big or small, is doomed to become a career criminal. Every parent knows that kids make mistakes and do not always comprehend the consequences of their actions. The Children in Prison Rehabilitation Act is a bill that has been filed during this legislative session by clinical law professor Paolo Annino and a group of law students at the Florida State University College of Law, Children in Prison Project. The act recognizes what the scientific community -- and the rest of the world -- has known for some time: Children are different and children can be rehabilitated.

The act's goal is to provide adolescent offenders an opportunity to prove that they have been rehabilitated and to give those adolescent offenders, who have earned their rehabilitation, the possibility of parole. The act is a measured response to the fact that the United States is the leader in the incarceration of children. The United States has 2,225 adolescent offenders incarcerated and serving life without the possibility of parole. The United States is the only country in the world that continues to sentence children to life without the possibility of parole. We are alone in the world in this practice.

Children are different from adults in their capacity for rehabilitation. Scientific data in neuroscience show that a child's brain continues to mature and develop into the early 20s. The areas of the brain that govern impulse control, planning and thinking are not fully developed by the age of 18, the legal age of majority. This new data expose the fact that the brain is still growing and developing through adolescence.

The proposed act contains tough criteria that each adolescent offender must meet to qualify for parole. The adolescent offender must have been 16 or younger at the time of the offense; sentenced for more than 10 years, up to and including life without the possibility of parole; incarcerated for at least eight years; and must be able to prove rehabilitation. The Florida Parole Commission determines whether an adolescent offender has been rehabilitated by considering the child's involvement in the crime -- follower or leader; the child's mental or developmental disabilities; whether the child has been discipline free while in prison; and the GED program or other educational programs completed while incarcerated.

The focus of the act is rehabilitation for a specific population of adolescent offenders. The act's criteria go on to exclude any adolescent offender who, before the current offense, has been adjudicated as an adult for felony battery; aggravated battery; assault or battery of law enforcement officers, firefighters, EMS personnel or elderly people; possession of a weapon or firearm during commission of a felony; sexual battery; abuse, aggravated abuse or neglect of a child; and cruelty to animals. Adolescent offenders do not qualify if they have been deemed habitual felony offenders. This act provides a second chance for those few child inmates who have turned their lives around in prison.

The drafters of the Children in Prison Rehabilitation Act urge the Legislature to enact this proposed bill and to make it law. It is important that as elections draw near and politicians promise to be "tough on crime," we all remember that well placed mercy can change lives. Children are different. Children can be rehabilitated.

Castagliuolo is an intern at the Florida State University College of Law.

Life Without Parole...Our View

Monday, March 24, 2008

In Maryland
Sunday's Baltimore Sun had the editorial, "Life Without Parole - Our view: It's an inappropriate sentence for juveniles."

At 35, Marcus Tunstall has spent more than half his life in prison. It's unlikely he'll ever get out unless a governor intervenes or the law changes. That's because Mr. Tunstall is serving life without parole for a crime he committed while a minor. He is among 15 such men who entered Maryland's prison system under this unforgiving term. Arrested as adolescents, they were too young to join the Army, not old enough to buy liquor and ineligible to vote. And yet the state consigned them to an interminable existence; their prison stay will far exceed their years on the outside. It's a living death that harbors no chance for redemption.

The U.S. is the only country that imprisons juveniles without the possibility of parole. It's a sentence that defies the scientific research on teenagers' reasoning and potential for reform. Some states are finally realizing that and moving to repeal these laws. Maryland, unfortunately, is not among them.

Known as kid-lifers, juvenile offenders imprisoned under mandatory life-without-parole laws number about 2,300 in 39 states, according to a study by Northwestern University Law School's Children and Family Justice Center and the John Howard Association. Despite those staggering figures, only Nebraska, Florida, Michigan, Illinois and California are actively trying to change their laws on kid-lifers. Illinois' law came on the books more than 30 years ago as youth crime was increasing.

Maryland law allowed for a life-without-parole sentence for a juvenile convicted as an adult in 1988, following the Supreme Court's decision to exclude juveniles from the death penalty. Most of Maryland's kid-lifers entered prison at 17 or 16.

The juvenile index is here.

Dozens of children in U.S. Face life in prison

By Matthew Bigg

ALABASTER, Alabama (Reuters) - Underage criminals cannot face the death penalty in the United States but dozens of offenders imprisoned for crimes committed when they were young teenagers will still die behind bars.

The U.S. Supreme Court abolished the death penalty for minors in 2005 but 19 states permit "life-means-life" sentences for those under 18, according to a study by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI).

In all, 2,225 people are sentenced to die in U.S. prisons for crimes they committed as minors and 73 of them were aged 13 and 14 at the time of the crime, according to the group, which is based in Montgomery, Alabama.

Elsewhere in the world, life sentences with no chance of parole are rare for underage offenders. Human Rights Watch estimates that only 12 people outside the United States face such sentences.

Judicial reform advocates say the U.S. provision is an example of how harsh sentences have helped cause a jump in incarceration rates since the 1970s. The United States jails a higher percentage of its population than anywhere else in the industrialized world, these advocates say.

"These kids have been swept up in this tide of carceral control that is unparalleled in American history," said Bryan Stevenson, director of the EJI. "We have become quite comfortable about throwing people away," he said.

Others defend the statute, arguing it is popular with voters and gives comfort to victims to know that perpetrators of serious crimes against them will not one day walk free.

They also use an "adult crime, adult time" argument -- minors who commit adult crimes should be punished as adults.

"I SAW HER IN FLAMES"

The case of Ashley Jones, who was 14 when she killed, illustrates the seriousness of many crimes that result in for-life sentences.

One night in August 1999, Jones and her 16-year-old boyfriend, Geramie Hart, angered by her family's disapproval of their relationship, went to her home in Birmingham, Alabama. They set her grandfather on fire with lighter fluid, stabbed him and shot him dead.

They also stabbed and shot dead Jones' aunt in her bedroom and set her grandmother on fire.

Jones' 10-year-old sister, Mary, was asleep in bed but they dragged her to the kitchen to see the attack on her family.

"I had to sit there and watch her (Ashley) torture my grandmother. I saw her in flames," said Mary Jones, recounting her ordeal in an interview in Alabaster, Alabama.

"Geramie ... picked me up by my neck and pointed a gun at me and said: 'This is how you are going to die.' Ashley said: 'No, wait. I'll do her.'"

They stabbed Mary Jones repeatedly, puncturing a lung, and drove off leaving her and her grandmother, whose injuries included burns, stab and gunshot wounds, to stagger outside.

The questions raised by criminal cases involving teenagers are difficult to answer.

Is a young teenager responsible for crimes in the same way as an adult and to what extent, if at all, should courts consider a minor's family situation and background?

"It goes against human inclinations to give up completely on a young teenager. It's impossible for a court to say that any 14-year-old never has the possibility to live in society," said Stephen Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights.

"LOST ALL HOPE"

The Equal Justice Initiative has filed suits in six states challenging the life-without-parole sentences and has brought a case in federal court in northern Alabama over the Jones case, arguing it represents cruel and unusual punishment.

Hart is also serving the same sentence.

The group says a disproportionate number of the minors serving the sentence are black or Hispanic and many were tried as adults with inadequate legal counsel. Also, it says up to 70 percent were given mandatory sentences.

Not all those serving life-means-life sentences for crimes committed as minors are convicted killers.

Antonio Nunez was convicted of multiple counts of attempted murder and also aggravated kidnapping and sentenced to life without parole for his role in a kidnap, police chase and shootout in April, 2001, in which nobody was injured.

Nunez, aged 14 at the time of the crime, grew up in a part of Los Angeles where gang activity was common. In 2000, he was wounded and his brother killed in a gang-related shooting.

His sister Cindy Nunez said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles the life sentence devastated her family.

"He has lost all hope .... We try to keep his spirits up by saying something will change in the law," she said.

Mary Jones, now 19, is attempting to reconstruct her life. She testified against her sister in court but has visited her in jail. She blames Hart for changing her sister from "the sweetest girl" into a murderer.

"She should have a chance to have a life. Her life shouldn't just be taken away from her like that. Sometimes I'm kind of mad and then I'm sad," she said. "I practically lost her too because she is in prison."

(Reporting by Matthew Bigg; Editing by Michael Christie and Eddie Evans)

Does Separation Equal Suffering?

Some state inmates spend years in solitary. Critics say that is cruel and unusual.

By MEG LAUGHLIN

Published December 17, 2006


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ian Manuel had just turned 14 when he went to prison for shooting a woman in a botched robbery on a Tampa sidewalk. Mouthy and disobedient, he was sent to solitary confinement a year and a half later.

That was in 1992. He has been there ever since.

Now 29, Manuel has spent half his life in a concrete box the size of a walk-in closet. His food comes through a slot in the door. He never sees another inmate. Out of boredom he cuts himself just to watch the blood trickle.

Attorneys who advocate on behalf of prisoners call Manuel "the poster boy" for the ill effects of solitary confinement.

There are 3,500 inmates in solitary confinement in Florida prisons. More than 1,400 of them are held under the strictest conditions, like Manuel.

They are not allowed out of their cells except for three quick showers a week and five hours in an empty outdoor cage that resembles a dog run.

They are not allowed to stand at their doors and look out the narrow plexiglass window in their cells, bathe in their sinks when it's hot, or use their blankets as a wrap when it's cold.

They are not allowed to call out chess plays from cell to cell or read anything but legal and religious materials. If they violate any of these rules, their time in solitary is extended.

In Florida a larger percentage of inmates - 4 percent - live "behind the door" than in any other state. Their numbers are increasing by about 250 people a year, despite a state plan intended to decrease the numbers. Forty-seven of the inmates in solitary are younger than 18. Seventy-seven percent of the women and 33 percent of the men are diagnosed as mentally ill, raising questions of whether solitary confinement is a dumping ground for inmates whose illnesses are aggravated by isolation.

The Department of Corrections was brought to federal court in 1999 to defend itself against allegations that its use of solitary confinement amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. Seven years later, attorneys for the inmates argue the state still has not addressed the issue, despite a court-approved plan to do so. A federal judge will soon decide who is right: the state or the inmates.

During a September federal court hearing on the alleged abuses in solitary, Chase Riveland, former chief administrator for prison systems in Colorado, Washington and Oregon, said: "Prisons have people who must be kept away from the general population. The problem in Florida is not that (solitary) exists, but who goes in and who goes out and why, and how they are treated when they're in."

More than 50 percent of the inmates are held there for years, Riveland said, "because of minor disciplinary infractions, not because they're a threat to others."

Ian Manuel holds the record for being there the longest without a break.

A call to apologize

On a muggy July night in 1990, Debbie Baigrie, 28, was walking with a friend in downtown Tampa. Three boys walked up as she got to her car and demanded money. Manuel, then 13, pulled a gun and fired.

A bullet tore through Baigrie's open mouth and out her cheek, shattering five teeth and part of her gum. Manuel pleaded guilty to attempted felony murder. At his sentencing, the judge cited 17 prior arrests for shoplifting, purse snatching and stealing cars. He gave Manuel a life sentence without parole.

In 1991, when Manuel arrived at the prison processing center in Central Florida, he was so small no one could find a prison uniform to fit him, Ron McAndrew, then the assistant warden, recalled. Someone cut 6 inches off the boy's pant legs so he would have something to wear.

"He was scared of everything and acting like a tough guy as a defense mechanism," said McAndrew, now a prison and jail consultant in Florida. "He didn't stand a chance in an adult prison."

Within months, Manuel was sent to Apalachee Correctional Institution in Jackson County, which McAndrew called "one of the toughest adult prisons in the state." At Apalachee, the boy mouthed off to other inmates and correctional officers and made obscene hand gestures, racking up disciplinary infractions that landed him in solitary.

On Christmas Eve 1992, he was allowed to make one phone call. He called Debbie Baigrie, the woman he had shot.

"This is Ian. I am sorry for all the suffering I've caused you," she remembers him saying.

They began to correspond regularly. Baigrie said she was impressed with how well he wrote.

She asked prison officials to let him take the General Educational Development test and take college courses.

"I got a second chance in life. I recovered and went on," Baigrie said. "I wanted Ian to have the same chance."

But the rules of solitary forbade Manuel from participating in any kind of self-improvement or educational program. Instead, he sat in his cell day in and day out, without reading materials or human interaction, racking up more infractions for "disrespect," which only extended his time in solitary.

After several years, Baigrie gave up.

"Not because of Ian," she said, "but because the system made it impossible for him to improve. What does it say when a victim tries to do more for an inmate than the very system that's supposed to rehabilitate him?"

Harsh yes, but right?

But rehabilitation is not the point of solitary confinement, which officials call "close management."

Its intent is "to provide housing that removes inmates from the general population to ensure the safety of staff and other inmates," said James Upchurch, the head of security for the state Department of Corrections.

Under the strictest conditions, he said, inmates are still allowed "numerous privileges," among them, "stamps, mail, paper and (rubber) pens, a prison uniform, bedding, legal and religious material, three 10-minute showers a week and haircuts."

In September, when he was state attorney general, Charlie Crist, with Assistant State Attorney Jason Vail, wrote a brief saying solitary conditions "can be severe, even harsh, without violating the Constitution."

Their example: Sleeping on a concrete floor and "being denied a mattress or a bed for several days does not violate the Eighth Amendment."

Even if the state's "remedial action (is) unsuccessful," they said, the court cannot continue to monitor solitary unless the evidence shows the state "acted with the very purpose of causing harm."

Over nine days in September, inmates testified via video before Federal District Court Judge Henry Adams.

Anthony Sutton, 29, an inmate at Santa Rosa Correctional Institution, told the judge that he first went into solitary in 2002 when correctional officers found a knife in his roommate's mattress.

Sutton recently filed a written grievance because correctional officers won't allow him to wear the knee brace he requires to walk. Their written response: "Limited mobility of (solitary) status makes the knee brace unnecessary."

Inmate Marcus Green, 33, who is on the lowest level of solitary, told Adams, "Their rules aren't on the rule sheet. They make up their own rules. I was denied access to the day room because my pillow fluff wasn't neat the way they wanted. I was denied day room because I put paper on my vent to try to guide some ventilation in my cell."

Attorneys for the Department of Corrections did not dispute inmates' version of events. Vail said their stories "did not add up to systemic violations," which were required to prove cruel and unusual treatment.

"These prisoners don't practice civilized behavior. They don't follow rules. They don't deserve civilized treatment. It's a different world," Vail told the St. Petersburg Times.

Two days later, Vail asked to amend his statement: "What I meant to say was that these inmates don't conform and are there because they don't follow the rules. It's that simple."

Going slowly crazy

On the fifth day of the September hearing, Ian Manuel testified.

"It's my belief," he told Judge Adams, "that the reason I haven't been able to progress off CM (close management) all these years is the way the system is set up. One DR (disciplinary report) will keep you there for six months and those six months add up to years and those years turn into decades."

In the past seven months, prison records show Manuel received three disciplinary writeups: one for not making his bed, another for hiding a day's worth of prescription medicine instead of taking it, and yet another for yelling through the food flap when a correctional officer refused to take his grievance form. Those reports extended his stay on the strictest level of solitary for nine months.

Manuel told the judge that in isolation he has become a "cutter," slicing his arms and legs with whatever sharp object he can find - a fragment of a toothpaste tube or a tiny piece of glass.

Don Gibbs, a psychiatrist for the Department of Corrections, said cutting and watching the blood flow is how hundreds of inmates "relieve the boredom and stress of isolation."

It takes from two to six months, Gibbs said, for inmates in solitary to start exhibiting signs of mental illness, if they are not already mentally ill.

"Nobody can be isolated for long periods of time with nothing to see and nothing to do and not deteriorate," he said. "If you're not mentally ill when you go in, you probably will be when you come out."

In the past year, Ian Manuel has attempted suicide five times. In late August he slit his wrists. A prison nurse closed the wounds with superglue and returned him to his solitary cell.

When the judge asked him why he attempted suicide, Manuel said, "You kind of lose hope."

In early 2007, Adams will rule on whether solitary conditions should continue to be monitored by his court.

About that time, staff at Union Correctional Institution will review Manuel's status to see if, after 14 years in solitary, he will be allowed to go to the day room four hours a week to watch TV in handcuffs and shackles.

"Every day," he says, "I pray for this."

Researcher Angie Holan contributed to this report. Meg Laughlin can be reached at laughlin@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8068.

Lionel Tate pleads no contest to pizza holdup

Once believed to be the youngest person sentenced to life in prison in the United States, Lionel Tate got 10 years after pleading no contest Tuesday to armed robbery.

BY HANNAH SAMPSON
Lionel Tate, whose nine-year history in the Broward courts system has drawn worldwide attention, resolved his latest legal case on Tuesday when he pleaded no contest to armed robbery in the 2005 holdup of a pizza delivery man.

Tate, now 21, was on probation for the 1999 death of a 6-year-old playmate when the robbery occurred.

He is already serving 30 years in prison for violating his probation.

In a negotiated sentence, he will serve 10 years for the robbery while serving the time for violating his probation.

According to the Florida Department of Corrections, he is scheduled to be released from prison in 2031.

Dressed in black pants and a beige and gray shirt, Tate seemed relaxed in the courtroom, politely answering a judge's questions.

''I'm all right,'' he told reporters as Broward Sheriff's Office court deputies escorted him through a hallway later.

''Mr. Tate's been around a long time, his name's been around a long time,'' said Chief Assistant State Attorney Chuck Morton. ``He finally put an end to his case. It's really tragic that his life has taken this course and I don't feel good about that at all. But nevertheless, justice is served.''

JAILED AT 12

Tate was 12 in 1999 when he was arrested and charged as an adult for beating playmate Tiffany Eunick to death at his Pembroke Park home.

Two years later, he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, making history as the youngest person in the United States to receive such a sentence.

''We took a 12-year-old kid and locked him up in an adult penitentiary and basically subjected him to the worst of the worst -- even when he went to a juvenile facility, he was with the worst of the worst,'' said Tate's defense attorney, Jim Lewis. ``And this is how he grew up.''

His conviction was overturned by an appeals court, and a plea agreement led to his January 2004 release. In September of 2004, while under house arrest, he was arrested in a park for having a knife and being out of his house. A judge added five years to his 10-year probation but did not send him back to prison. Tate was arrested on May 23, 2005, for robbing the delivery man.

He previously pleaded guilty to the robbery and to violating his probation in 2006, but withdrew the guilty plea on the robbery.

Acting Circuit Court Judge Joel Lazarus sentenced Tate to 30 years in prison for violating probation -- a sentence that Lewis plans to fight.

Lewis said he will try to get that sentence knocked down to 10 years.

THE EVIDENCE

He said evidence that came out after the sentencing shows that Tate was not the gunman in the robbery.

Lewis said Tate ordered pizzas to be delivered to a Pembroke Park apartment and took pies from the car, but did not hold the gun on the delivery man.

''I admit he should be punished,'' Lewis said. ``But 30 years is just way too much.''

Morton said there was evidence that connected Tate to the crime, but also evidence that connected others. No one else has been charged in the robbery.

The arrest of another 12-year-old for murder earlier this year has drawn comparisons to Tate's case, with a key difference: Prosecutors charged the boy, accused of beating his 17-month-old cousin to death at her Lauderhill home, in juvenile court.

Lewis and Tate's mother, Kathleen Grossett-Tate, said that's how Tate's murder case should have been handled.

''You put them in a juvenile system, they're with children,'' said Grossett-Tate. ``They've not being trained to be career criminals.''

Waiting to catch an elevator at the courthouse Tuesday, she said: ``I'm tired of the whole system, the whole case. I'm just tired.''

Richard Rosenbaum, an attorney who previously represented Tate, called his former client ``a good person.''

''He has a good heart,'' Rosenbaum said. ``Unfortunately, society sort of ruined him by sending him away the way they did.''

Comments

It is possible to create positive change no matter what the given circumstance.
Lionel and his Mother have our support. We believe in the efforts put forth previously by attorney Richard Rosenbaum and Jim Lewis as well as Private Investigator Joe Carrillo.

We will continue to seek positive influence by way of education and support so that
when it is time for his release he will have a foundation for contribution to society.

This is out of respect for the life of Tiffany Eunick something that is never
out of our thoughts.

Children can be tried as adults, but this still will not make them become one.
Change will only come by creating it.
--
Denise Marhoefer
The Defense Foundation For Children USA
The Juvenile Defender
defensefoundation@gmail.com


Posted by: Denise Marhoefer

Lionel Tate Gets 10 Years In Robbery Plea Deal

FT. LAUDERDALE (CBS4) ― Convicted child killer Lionel Tate was back in court Tuesday morning where he made a plea deal in connection with charges that he robbed a pizza delivery man.

Right before jury selection was scheduled to begin, Tate, 21, pled no contest to a charge of armed robbery with a deadly weapon.

He received a ten year sentence to run concurrently with a 30-year sentence he received last year for violating his probation after he was caught with a gun.

Tate allegedly held up that pizza delivery man in 2005. A second charge of probation violation was dropped.

Tate's mother, Kathleen Grossett Tate, left court saying: "I'm tired of the whole system, the whole case, I'm just tired."

Despite Tuesday's plea deal, this case if far from over.

Tate's attorney, Jim Lewis, plans to appeal the 30 year probation violation sentence claiming that it is excessive because Lionel wasn't the one waving the gun in the robbery.

"Yes, Lionel participated in the theft but he was not standing there with a gun, robbing somebody," according to Lewis.

An effort last year to get Tate's robbery case thrown out failed when an appeals court upheld that 30-year probation violation sentence.

Tate was trying to have his sentence thrown out by claiming his attorney was incompetent. But the 4th District Court of Appeals declined to reverse it.

In 2001, Tate was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of 6-year-old playmate Tiffany Eunick. In 2004, an appeals court overturned that sentence, and ordered him to serve a year's house arrest and 10 years probation.

Before the appeals court intervened, Tate was the youngest person in modern U.S. history to get a life prison term. He was 12 at the time of the killing.

Lionel Tate gets 10 years in pizza delivery robbery

FORT LAUDERDALE - Lionel Tate pleaded no contest Tuesday to charges stemming from the May 2005 robbery of a pizza delivery man.

Tate, dressed in tan slacks and a long-sleeved shirt, accepted a 10-year prison sentence to run concurrently with a 30-year sentence for violating his probation.

Tate, now 21, was convicted in 2001 of murdering first-grade playmate Tiffany Eunick when he was only 12. The conviction was overturned, and Tate later pleaded guilty to second degree murder in that case. He was sentenced to probation, which prosecutors say he violated by robbing a pizza delivery man in 2005. The violation earned him the 30-year sentence.

Had he been convicted of armed robbery with a deadly weapon, Tate could have faced life in prison.

Tate was 14 when he was sentenced to life in prison for the 1999 killing of Eunick, which happened when he was 12. Tate's lawyers initially claimed that the girl died accidentally while Tate imitated pro wrestling moves he had seen on television.

After his murder conviction was overturned on appeal in 2004, Tate reached a plea deal that included his release from prison on probation. It was this probation that a judge ruled he had violated through involvement in the pizza robbery.

If he had been convicted after a trial of the robbery charges, Tate could have received a life prison sentence once again. Tate had previously agreed in 2006 to plead guilty to the robbery, but withdrew it.

For now, Tate is tentatively scheduled for release from prison in May 2031, according to the state Department of Corrections.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Youngest person sentenced to life won't get additional time for robbery

The Associated Press

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Lionel Tate, whose killing of a 6-year-old girl once made him the youngest person in modern U.S. history sentenced to life in prison, accepted a plea deal Tuesday in a pizza robbery that occurred while he was out on probation.

Tate, 21, is already serving 30 years behind bars for violating his probation in the murder case. Under an agreement with prosecutors, Tate pleaded no contest to the May 2005 robbery of a pizza delivery man but will serve no additional prison time.

Tate attorney Jim Lewis said the 10-year sentence for the robbery conviction will run at the same time as the probation violation sentence. Lewis said he will continue to press to reduce Tate's total sentence to 10 years.

"This is definitely a good outcome for him and hopefully it's not the end," Lewis said. "Thirty years is too much. Lionel has made mistakes. But I think 10 years is plenty of punishment."

Tate was 14 when he was sentenced to life in prison for the 1999 killing of Tiffany Eunick, which happened when he was 12. Tate's lawyers initially claimed that the girl died accidentally while Tate imitated pro wrestling moves he had seen on television.

After his murder conviction was overturned on appeal in 2004, Tate reached a plea deal that included his release from prison on probation. It was this probation that a judge ruled he had violated through involvement in the pizza robbery.

If he had been convicted after a trial of the robbery charges, Tate could have received a life prison sentence once again. Tate had previously agreed in 2006 to plead guilty to the robbery, but withdrew it.

For now, Tate is tentatively scheduled for release from prison in May 2031, according to the state Department of Corrections.

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/12/28/teen.brain/

Expert: Teen brain key to understanding criminal behavior

• Story Highlights
• Latest research shows brain continues to develop to age 25 and beyond
  
• Teen brains lack impulse control, sophisticated reasoning capability
  
• Some advocates say teens should be judged differently in criminal justice system.
  
• Supreme Court in 2005 outlawed death penalty for crimes committed before 18
  
• Next Article in Health »
  
  

NEW YORK (AP) -- The teenage brain, Laurence Steinberg says, is like a car with a good accelerator but a weak brake. With powerful impulses under poor control, the likely result is a crash.

Dr. Jay Giedd of the National Institutes of Health says the brain continues to mature up to age 25 or later.

And, perhaps, a crime.

Steinberg, a Temple University psychology professor, helped draft an American Psychological Association brief for a 2005 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for crimes committed before age 18.

That ruling relies on the most recent research on the adolescent brain, which indicates the juvenile brain is still maturing in the teen years and reasoning and judgment are developing well into the early to mid 20s. It is often cited as state lawmakers consider scaling back punitive juvenile justice laws passed during the 1990s.

"As any parent knows," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the 5-4 majority, youths are more likely to show "a lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility" than adults. "These qualities often result in impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions."

He also noted that "juveniles are more vulnerable or susceptible to negative influences and outside pressures, including peer pressure," causing them to have less control over their environment.

Some child advocates have pointed to the Supreme Court decision and the research as evidence that teens -- even those accused of serious crimes -- should not be regarded in the same way as adults in the criminal justice system.

Dr. David Fassler, a psychiatry professor at the University of Vermont College of Medicine who has testified before legislative committees on brain development, says the research doesn't absolve teens but offers some explanation for their behavior.

"It doesn't mean adolescents can't make a rational decision or appreciate the difference between right and wrong," he said. "It does mean, particularly when confronted with stressful or emotional decisions, they are more likely to act impulsively, on instinct, without fully understanding or analyzing the consequences of their actions."

Experts say that even at ages 16 and 17, when compared to adults, juveniles on average are more:

•impulsive.

•aggressive.

• emotionally volatile.

• likely to take risks.

• reactive to stress.

• vulnerable to peer pressure.

• prone to focus on and overestimate short-term payoffs and underplay longer-term consequences of what they do.

• likely to overlook alternative courses of action.

Violence toward others also tends to peak in adolescent years, says psychiatrist Dr. Peter Ash of Emory University. It's mostly likely to start around age 16, and people who haven't committed a violent crime by age 19 only rarely start doing it later, he said.

The good news here, he said, is that a violent adolescent doesn't necessarily become a violent adult. Some two-thirds to three-quarters of violent youth grow out of it, he said. "They get more self-controlled."

Some of the changes found in behavioral studies are paralleled by changes in the brain itself as youths become adults.

In fact, in just the past few years, Steinberg said, brain scans have given biological backing to commonsense notions about teen behavior, like their impulsiveness and vulnerability to peer pressure.

It's one thing to say teens don't control their impulses as well as adults, but another to show that they can't, he said. As for peer pressure, the new brain research "gives credence to the idea that this isn't a choice that kids are making to give in to their friends, that biologically, they're more vulnerable to that," he said.

Consider the lobes at the front of the brain. The nerve circuitry here ties together inputs from other parts of the brain, said Dr. Jay Giedd of the National Institute of Mental Health.

This circuitry weighs how much priority to give incoming messages like "Do this now" versus "Wait! What about the consequences?" In short, the frontal lobes are key for making good decisions and controlling impulses.

Brain scans show that the frontal lobes don't mature until age 25, and their connections to other parts of the brain continue to improve to at least that age, Giedd said.

The inexplicable behavior and poor judgments teens are known for almost always happen when teens are feeling high emotion or intense peer pressure, conditions that overwhelm the still-maturing circuitry in the front part of brain, Giedd said.

As Steinberg sees it, a teenager's brain has a well-developed accelerator but only a partly developed brake.

By around 15 or 16, the parts of the brain that arouse a teen emotionally and make him pay attention to peer pressure and the rewards of action -- the gas pedal -- are probably all set. But the parts related to controlling impulses, long-term thinking, resistance to peer pressure and planning -- the brake, mostly in the frontal lobes -- are still developing.

"It's not like we go from becoming all accelerator to all brake," Steinberg said. "It's that we go from being heavy-foot-on-the-accelerator to being better able to manage the whole car."

Giedd emphasized that scientists can't yet scan an individual's brain and draw conclusions about how mature he is, or his degree of responsibility for his actions.

Brain scans do show group differences between adult and teen brains, he said, "but whether or not that should matter (in the courtroom) is the part that needs to be decided more by the judicial system than the neuroscientist."

Steinberg, who frequently testifies on juvenile justice policy and consults with state legislators on the topic, said it's not clear to him how much the research on teen brains affects lawmakers. They seem more swayed by pragmatic issues like the cost of treating teens as adults, he said. But he noted that he has been asked to testify more in the past few years than before.

In any case, experts say, there's nothing particularly magic about the age 18 as a standard dividing line between juveniles and adults in the courtroom.

Different mental capabilities mature at different rates, Steinberg notes. Teens as young as 15 or 16 can generally balance short-term rewards and possible costs as well as adults, but their ability to consider what might happen later on is still developing, he said.

A dividing line of age 18 is better than 15 and not necessarily superior to 19 or 17, but it appears good enough to be justified scientifically, he said.

Steinberg said he thinks courts should be able to punish some 16- or 17- year olds as adults. That would be reserved for repeat violent offenders who've resisted rehabilitation by the juvenile justice system, and who could endanger other youth in the juvenile system if they returned. "I don't think there are a lot of these kids," Steinberg said.

For the rest, he thinks it makes sense to try rehabilitating young offenders in the juvenile justice system. That's better than sending them through the adult system, which can disrupt their development so severely that "they're never going be able to be a productive member of society," Steinberg said. "You're not doing society any favor at all."

Ash said that to decide whom to treat as an adult, courts need some kind of guideline that combines the defendant's age with the crime he's accused of. That should leave room for individual assessments, he said.

Health Library

• MayoClinic.com: Health Library

But "we don't have very good measuring sticks" for important traits like how impulsive a juvenile is, he said.

In any case, the decision for each defendant should balance a number of reasons for punishment, like retribution, protecting society, deterring future crime, and rehabilitation, said Ash, who's a member of the American Psychiatric Association's Committee on Judicial Action.

Even if a 14-year-old murderer is held morally responsible for the crime, he will have matured by the time he's 18, and in the meantime he may be more amenable to rehabilitation than an adult murderer is, Ash said.

In fact, most experts conclude that rehabilitation works better for juveniles than for adult offenders, he said.

And just as parents know how irrational juveniles can be, Ash said, they also know that rehabilitation is a key goal in punishing them.

"What we really want," he said, "is to turn delinquent kids into good adults." E-mail to a friend

Mom hopes incarcerated son will be freed

By SHARON COHEN, AP National Writer
Sun Dec 9, 12:40 AM ET

Every month or so, Missy Phillips makes a four-hour drive to visit her son in prison, refusing to accept that his fate has been sealed — and he will die behind bars. Joshua, just 23, is serving a life-without-parole sentence in Florida for a ghastly crime — the bludgeoning and stabbing of his 8-year-old neighbor, Maddie Clifton. He's nearing the end of what could be the first of many decades behind bars.

But his mother doesn't see it that way.

"We talk in terms of when he gets out, not if," Phillips says. "I have to keep some semblance of hope for both of us. I don't know how it's going to happen. I do believe that someday he will walk out of there. I can't go the other way."

Joshua Phillips was just 14 in November 1998 when Maddie, who lived across the street in Jacksonville, disappeared. He joined in the massive search for her. Police were even at his house for routine questioning. About a week later, Missy Phillips made a horrifying discovery: She noticed a wet spot near her son's water bed, pulled aside the frame and saw Maddie's feet.

Police said Joshua Phillips confessed, claiming he beat Maddie with a bat and repeatedly stabbed her in a panic to stop her screams after he accidentally hit her with a baseball. Prosecutors cast doubt on that story.

Phillips says she has repeatedly begged her son for an explanation, but has never received one.

"I used to plead, 'Josh, I found Maddie in our home. I think I deserve to know what happened,' " she says. "He won't discuss it with me. I had to learn how to step back ... and say I may never know."

Phillips, now 52, had done her own soul-searching over the years.

"I think every mother who has a tragedy of this magnitude — certainly early on, you question yourself: Did I miss something? Did I do something wrong?" she says. "Every mother who loves her child feels a responsibility. ... He's told me more than once, 'It's not anything you did or didn't do.' "

A year after the murder, Phillips says she approached Maddie Clifton's mother and they have spoken several times. And when Phillips' husband, Steve, was killed in a car accident in 2000, the girl's mother, Sheila, visited to offer her condolences. "She's a kind person," Phillips says.

Phillips has remarried — she met her British husband after he read about her son's case on the Internet and she has taken his name, though she prefers not to make it public. She says she moved twice to stay anonymous as she presses for a new trial for her son, claiming his attorney was incompetent.

She maintains her son's sentence is excessive.

"They should have some alternative way of dealing with juveniles in serious situations so they don't get their lives thrown away," she says. "That's what the state says — my son's life is worthless. Just throw away the key."

State Attorney Harry Shorstein, who prosecuted Joshua as an adult, says his case — and those of other juvenile lifers — should be reviewed at some point and the possibility of release considered if appropriate.

Phillips tries to be upbeat, but admits her resolve sometimes wavers.

"I'm human," she says. "I have my moments, my worries and my doubts."

As much as her son dominates her thoughts, she says when she sees a little girl with her family, she is haunted by memories of Maddie Clifton.

"Of course, I'm mindful of Maddie not being here," she says. "As close as I am to this tragedy, I can't say I know their pain anymore than they know mine. .. I think of them a lot. I think of Maddie a lot. ... I'll carry this with me until I die."

Harsh crimes, hard time: when juveniles are sentenced to life without parole

EDITOR'S NOTE -- What does it mean to send a kid criminal away for life, and is it just? This is another in a series of stories on a growing effort to reform penalties against juvenile offenders.

By ADAM GELLER

AP National Writer

DETROIT (AP) -- It began as a feud only a child could invent -- teenage chest-thumping over who had the right to sneak across the golf course at Germania Town & Country Club after dark and scoop lost balls out of a pond.

But by the time it ended in the pre-dawn blackness of a long-ago June morning, that juvenile bravado had exploded into a crime whose horror defied adult comprehension.

Buried inside the charred skeleton of a Saginaw home, three children -- 7-year-old Isaac Rollie and his 9- and 11-year-old sisters -- lay dead. They perished at the hands of two local teens, who hurled pop-bottle firebombs through the windows of the house on Jordan Street so one could settle a petty score.

For taking three innocent lives, a judge decided, Michael Lee Perry had to pay. Perry was 16 at the time of the fire, but for an adult crime he'd have to do adult time -- and spend the rest of his life in prison, without any chance for parole.

That was 17 years ago. And today, when Perry rises and offers his hand to a visitor allowed inside the razor wire-topped brick of Detroit's Mound Correctional Facility, it is clear that prisoner No. 217645's claim on childhood has long since lapsed.

He stands 6-foot-2, graying at the temples, his hairline receding. No question, Perry is a man now.

He appeals, though, for the understanding he says the boy he once was still deserves.

"I was wrong. I took people's lives who didn't even have a chance to grow up and experience life. But, I mean, I didn't even experience life myself,'' says Perry, now 34. "I'm not saying a child should go unpunished. ... (But) it's like I'm just abandoned, discarded, left for nothing.''

Perry is far from alone.

At least 2,381 people are serving life without parole in U.S. prisons for crimes when they were 17 or younger. The vast majority are locked up because they took another life.

Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that sentencing juveniles to death is unconstitutional, advocates have been nudging lawmakers, courts and the public to go one step further and re-examine the life sentences meted out to young people convicted of the most serious crimes.

If we believe that juveniles are intrinsically different from adults -- that their judgment is lacking, that they are capable of learning from mistakes -- then how can we justify locking them away forever?

It is a difficult question and a painful one to contemplate. Some of the crimes are horrific. Others seem downright senseless. The age of the perpetrators -- and often of their victims -- is enough to make any mother or father say a quiet prayer.

Then there is the fact that laws stringently tightened in recent years often give judges and juries little or no choice in weighing punishment. In many states, the severity of the crime, not the age of the accused, mandates trial and punishment as an adult.

Even when some measure of discretion is allowed, it can distort the choices.

When the time came to sentence Michael Perry, state law forced a judge to decide between widely disparate options. He could treat Perry as a juvenile, despite the seriousness of the crime, and see him released by 21. Or he could send him away forever.

"The only conclusion that I can reach,'' Judge Leopold Borrello told two grieving families gathered in the courtroom that day, "is that the law deprives me of doing justice.''

------=

Quantel Lotts was 14. He and his brothers were spending the weekend at a friend's house in St. Francois County, Mo., and Quantel and his stepbrother Michael Barton started fighting. Quantel chased Michael -- who was three years older -- with a bow and arrow before an adult stepped in. Not long after, while they snacked, one of the younger children noticed Quantel holding a knife and reported him to Michael.

"Let's take this outside,'' Michael told Quantel. In the yard, their shoving match ended in Michael's death.

Quantel says he turned down an offer to plead to second-degree murder just before his trial began. Found guilty, he was sentenced to life without parole.

Today, speaking by telephone from prison, Quantel Lotts will not talk about what happened that day. But he remembers clearly where it left him.

"They say my stepbrother's dead and they say I killed him,'' he says. "When I first got locked up, I spent the first six months crying to myself every night.''

------=

Americans are firm believers in stiff punishment. But U.S. courts long applied a more forgiving standard when the accused was a juvenile.

Then in the late 1980s and early 1990s, alarm over violent youth crime set off widespread fears. Tales of brutal carjackings and brazen gang warfare, of remorseless kids who killed just to know what it felt like, filled headlines.

Soon, experts warned, we would be at the mercy of legions of juvenile "superpredators.'' In state after state, lawmakers and prosecutors decided to get tough.

Many states began requiring that juveniles accused of first-degree murder be tried as adults. To show they meant business, lawmakers mandated stiffer punishments. If you were convicted of murder, no matter how old, you were going to do life.

The new mind-set resulted in swift change. In 1980, just two juveniles were sentenced to life without parole, the harshest punishment possible short of the death penalty. By 1996, 152 youth offenders were sent to prison for life, according to figures compiled by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Today, inmates in 39 states and the federal prisons are serving life without parole for crimes they committed as youngsters. Five states -- Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Michigan, Florida and California -- account for two-thirds of the cases documented by the two human rights groups, which are pushing for reform.

The tougher laws were applauded by prosecutors and victims' advocates as necessary tools to fight crime and protect the public.

"If they can do these kinds of crimes, then they've got to face the punishment,'' says Maggie Elvey, a California activist whose husband, Ross, was beaten to death in 1993 by two boys, ages 15 and 16.

"My theory is when Ross can walk the face of the Earth again, that's when you can get out,'' Elvey says.

But the sharp rise in juvenile violence that the new laws were meant to fight never came. Gradually, that has led some to question whether the tougher approach went too far.

"There were all kinds of predictions (of a sharp rise in juvenile violence). I think I even made a few. But that hasn't panned out,'' says Linda J. Collier, a dean at Delaware County Community College in Media, Pa., among those who called for stiffer juvenile sentences. "There are probably many cases where I'd say, 'Yes, lock them up and throw away the key.' But there are probably other cases where that kid, if you look into his eyes, if you look into his soul, you can say yes, they can be rehabilitated.''

But how to do that? Should life without parole be eliminated for all juvenile offenders or only for some of them? What should the alternative be?

The questions get harder when they are applied to real lives rather than abstracts.

Addolfo Davis was only 14, but he'd already known plenty of trouble -- the child of a crack addict, he'd been arrested for shoplifting, robbery and other offenses starting when he was 10. His grandmother rejected a child welfare agency's recommendation that he be removed from her home, then watched as he beat his own head until it bled and burned himself with cigarettes.

Then, in October 1990, Davis joined two other teens -- one 16, the other 18 -- in something far worse. Angered because of a dispute over drug-sales territory, they set out to even a score. The trio, all carrying guns, headed to the third-floor apartment of a rival, and when it opened, pushed inside.

Davis didn't get far. One of the men inside knocked his gun away immediately and ran. But Davis' companions began shooting, killing two of those inside and wounding two others.

After he was arrested, Davis was transferred to adult court, in part because of his prior record. When he was convicted of murder -- found accountable although he hadn't fired a shot -- the law made it clear he would be sentenced to life. Today, he is 31.

"Gun towers, bars, walls, lock downs, hand cuffs, visits, letters, collect calls,'' he wrote for an assignment in a prison ministry class two years ago. "This is all I know.''

------=

On a Sunday night in 1994, the kitchen staff at Bistro Pete's was too busy to notice the restaurant's back door had been left unlocked. Suddenly, two masked figures barged into the suburban Sacramento eatery. They waved guns, and barked orders. Moments later, kitchen manager David Lamburth lay dying.

Police arrested three 17-year-olds. The shot that killed Lamburth, they said, was fired by Dwayne "Tommy'' DeLuna. At trial, DeLuna acknowledged his role but claimed the shooting was an accident.

"Show some mercy. Consider his age. I know what's in his heart,'' DeLuna's mother pleaded with the judge, after he was found guilty. "He is a good kid.''

But the victim's mother begged to differ. "He's dead. You did it. When you shot my kid, Tommy, you shot me, too.''

In weighing punishment, a judge told DeLuna the legal system had already shown mercy. If he'd been a few months older at the time of the shooting, he could've faced execution. Instead, with five months left in his childhood in the eyes of the law, he was sentenced to life without parole.

------=

Sending juveniles to prison for life raises a host of tough questions. Colorado tangled with them last year when lawmakers made juvenile lifers eligible for parole after 40 years and the governor established a special clemency board to look at those already in prison. Legislators in Illinois and California have introduced bills calling for change.

Now, Michigan -- where 306 inmates are serving life for crimes they committed when they were 17 or younger -- could be the next to face those questions.

At least that is the hope of Deborah LaBelle, an Ann Arbor attorney pushing for reform. She lambastes the inconsistencies of a legal system that deems people too immature to vote or drink alcohol or serve on juries, but says they are old enough to be held accountable as adults for their crimes. Worse, she says, is that mandating life sentences forces courts to treat all youth convicted of murder the same.

"Aren't there kids who have done horrible things? Yes. But then you have to grant that aren't there kids who didn't, who just made a horrible decision,'' she says. "Shouldn't we individualize them? Aren't they at least entitled to that?''

LaBelle's files are filled with dozens of such stories.

Some echo the "poster child'' cases highlighted by advocates -- tales of teens who, at least in the retelling, are guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Often, they acted as accomplices but didn't pull the trigger, or committed crimes at the behest of someone older.

But the debate is crystallized in the cases that force hard choices -- harsh sentences vs. harsh crimes.

They are stories like Trevor Brownlee's, who admonishes himself -- 18 years too late -- for his days as a teenage drug dealer on the streets of Ypsilanti. In 1989, when Brownlee was 15, he and two friends set out for a party. Local gangs were feuding. Underneath his trenchcoat, Brownlee carried a sawed-off shotgun.

It wasn't long before Brownlee's group ran into teens they'd never seen before, in from Detroit. Soon, they started trading words over turf. The confrontation seemed to fizzle. Then, Brownlee's friend shouted an alarm: Was one of the out-of-towners reaching for a gun?

Brownlee didn't wait to find out. He fired into the Detroit teens' car, then shot one in the torso, another in the leg. The first was killed. The second was paralyzed from the waist down.

Today, Brownlee wears No. 211016 on the state blues issued to prisoners at Riverside Correctional Facility in Ionia, where he is serving life. The sentence has given him plenty of time to think about that night. What troubles him goes beyond knowledge that he killed someone. It's that, in his words, the crime was "about nothing.''

"It wasn't until I was 25 that I actually sat down and realized the full extent of what I did,'' says Brownlee, now 33. "Man, I was an idiot. That's the best way to describe it.''

Brownlee and others like him hope Michigan lawmakers see that they can learn and change, that they are worthy of a second chance. But backers of life without parole sharply disagree.

They're people like Michael Thomas, the prosecutor in Saginaw, whose strong support for juvenile life sentences is based on personal experience. Years of violent juvenile crime have defiled his hometown, making clear the need to protect the public and see that justice is done, he says.

"I think most people sitting on a jury, most people with houses in your neighborhood, pretty much understand that they (juveniles accused of heinous crimes) are the worst of the worst and that the penalty does fit the crime,'' he says.

------=

On the day Michael Lee Perry was sentenced for the Saginaw firebombing, the judge sought a middle ground that did not exist.

Instead, he sentenced Perry to life, while recommending that after 20 years a Michigan governor consider him for a reprieve, commutation or pardon.

Perry is already preparing his petition for freedom.

"When I go see Michael he gives me hope that everything will be better when he comes home,'' his mother, Maria Chavira, says.

But Perry recognizes that political calculus makes exoneration rare. Even as he reassures his mother, he tries to makes peace with the possibility that will never happen.

"If I do (spend) my life within these walls and fences, I'll accept my punishment,'' he wrote the judge two years ago, in a letter intended for the family of his victims, "and do it in the memory of the pain, suffering, heartaches and deaths I helped cause.''

"I will never forget.''

AP-ES-12-08-07 1215EST

Scientists say teen brain, still maturing, is key to understanding behavior

Scans show that the brain doesn't mature until age 25; increasingly, courts are considering such findings as they decide what punishments fit teen crime.

By Malcolm Ritter
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sunday, December 09, 2007

NEW YORK — The teenage brain, Laurence Steinberg says, is like a car with a good accelerator but a weak brake. With powerful impulses under poor control, the likely result is a crash.

And, perhaps, a crime.

Steinberg, a Temple University psychology professor, helped draft an American Psychological Association brief for a 2005 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for crimes committed before age 18.

That ruling relies on the most recent research on the adolescent brain, which indicates the juvenile brain is still maturing in the teen years and reasoning and judgment are developing well into the early to mid-20s. It is often cited as state lawmakers consider scaling back punitive juvenile justice laws passed during the 1990s.

"As any parent knows," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the 5-4 majority, youths are more likely to show "a lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility" than adults. " These qualities often result in impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions."

He also noted that "juveniles are more vulnerable or susceptible to negative influences and outside pressures, including peer pressure," causing them to have less control over their environment.

Some child advocates have pointed to the Supreme Court decision and the research as evidence that teens — even those accused of serious crimes — should not be regarded in the same way as adults in the criminal justice system.

Dr. David Fassler, a psychiatry professor at the University of Vermont College of Medicine who has testified before legislative committees on brain development, says the research doesn't absolve teens but offers some explanation for their behavior.

"It doesn't mean adolescents can't make a rational decision or appreciate the difference between right and wrong," he said. "It does mean, particularly when confronted with stressful or emotional decisions, they are more likely to act impulsively, on instinct, without fully understanding or analyzing the consequences of their actions."

Experts say that even at ages 16 and 17, when compared to adults, juveniles on average are more impulsive, aggressive, emotionally volatile, reactive to stress and vulnerable to peer pressure. They also are more prone to focus on and overestimate short-term payoffs and underplay longer-term consequences of what they do. And they're more likely to overlook alternative courses of action.

Violence toward others also tends to peak in adolescent years, says psychiatrist Dr. Peter Ash of Emory University. It's mostly likely to start about age 16, and people who haven't committed a violent crime by age 19 only rarely start doing it later, he said.

The good news, he said, is that a violent adolescent doesn't necessarily become a violent adult. About two-thirds to three-quarters of violent youth grow out of it, Ash said. "They get more self-controlled."

Some of the changes found in behavioral studies are paralleled by changes in the brain itself as youths become adults. In fact, in just the past few years, Steinberg said, brain scans have given biological backing to common-sense notions about teen behavior.

It's one thing to say teens don't control their impulses as well as adults, but another to show that they can't, he said. As for peer pressure, the new brain research "gives credence to the idea that this isn't a choice that kids are making to give in to their friends — that biologically, they're more vulnerable to that," he said.

Consider the lobes at the front of the brain. The nerve circuitry there ties together inputs from other parts of the brain, said Dr. Jay Giedd of the National Institute of Mental Health.

This circuitry weighs how much priority to give incoming messages such as "Do this now" versus "Wait! What about the consequences?" In short, the frontal lobes are key for making good decisions and controlling impulses.

Brain scans show that the frontal lobes don't mature until age 25, and their connections to other parts of the brain continue to improve until at least that age, Giedd said.

The inexplicable behavior and poor judgments teens are known for almost always happen when teens are feeling powerful emotions or intense peer pressure, conditions that overwhelm the still-maturing circuitry in the front part of brain, Giedd said.

Giedd emphasized that scientists can't yet scan an individual's brain and draw conclusions about how mature he is, or the degree of responsibility he takes for his actions.

Brain scans do show group differences between adult and teen brains, he said, "but whether or not that should matter (in the courtroom) is the part that needs to be decided more by the judicial system than the neuroscientist."

There's nothing particularly magic about age 18 as a standard dividing line between juveniles and adults in the courtroom. Different mental capabilities mature at different rates, Steinberg notes. Teens as young as 15 or 16 can generally balance short-term rewards and possible costs as well as adults, but their ability to consider what might happen later on is still developing, he said.

A dividing line of age 18 is better than 15 and not necessarily superior to 19 or 17, but it appears good enough to be justified scientifically, he said.

Steinberg said he thinks courts should be able to punish some 16- or 17-year olds as adults. That would be reserved for repeat violent offenders who have resisted rehabilitation by the juvenile justice system and who could endanger other youths in the juvenile system if they returned. "I don't think there are a lot of these kids," Steinberg said.

For the rest, he says it makes sense to try rehabilitating young offenders in the juvenile justice system. That's better than sending them through the adult system, which can disrupt their development so severely that "they're never going be able to be a productive member of society," Steinberg said. "You're not doing society any favor at all."

Most experts conclude that rehabilitation works better for juveniles than for adult offenders, Ash said. And just as parents know how irrational juveniles can be, he said, they also know that rehabilitation is a key goal in punishing them.

"What we really want," he said, "is to turn delinquent kids into good adults."

Additional material from Associated Press writer Sharon Cohen.

Sentence Upheld for Fla. Child Killer

By BRIAN SKOLOFF Associated Press Writer

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) _ An appeals court has upheld a 30-year probation violation sentence for Lionel Tate, who for a time was the youngest person to be sentenced to life in a U.S. prison.

Wednesday’s ruling by the 4th District Court of Appeal sets the stage for Tate’s trial on robbery charges that could carry another life term.

Tate, 20, had sought to have the sentence thrown out based on procedural mistakes, his attorney, Jim Lewis, said Thursday.

Tate was 12 at the time of the 1999 beating death of 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick and became the youngest person in modern U.S. history to receive a life sentence. His lawyers initially claimed Tate killed the girl while imitating pro wrestling moves.

An appeals court overturned his first-degree murder conviction in 2004 after determining it wasn’t clear whether Tate understood the charges against him. He was freed from prison under a deal in which he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 10 years’ probation.

But in May 2005, police said he robbed a pizza delivery man, and he was found to be in possession of a gun even before that, a violation of his probation.

Tate initially pleaded guilty to the robbery and unrelated gun possession charge in return for a sentence of 10 to 30 years. Against the advice of his lawyers, he withdrew the plea in the robbery case but not the gun charge, and was sentenced to 30 years.

Tate’s new attorneys said they plan to file another appeal of his probation violation sentence based on ineffective counsel.

”We’re disappointed, but it’s not the end,” Lewis said.

Prosecutors declined to comment.

No date has been set for the robbery trial.