Makenzie+Peterson+4B



One summers eve in Broward Couty,Florida, Lionel Alexander Tate was left alone with a six-year old girl named Tiffany Eunick, whom his mother Kathleen was baby-sitting. While Kathleen took a nap upstairs, Lionel was apparently practicing wrestling moves which he had seen on TV on the small girl. Lionel had been 11 years old at the time and was larger than the little girl. It was later discovered that Eunick had been stomped on so forcefully as to lacerate her liver. Her other injuries included a fractured skull, fractured rib, and swollen brain. The prosecuter characterized these injuries as "similar to those she would have sustained by falling from a three story building."

The adolescent defendant argued that Tate had been too young to understand the consequences of his actians, and had been innocently imatating television. The state prosecuter said that "The acts of Lionel Tate were not the playful acts of a child...The acts of Lionel Tate were Cold, callous and indescribably cruel." Lionel Tate became the youngest American citizen ever to be sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parol. Tate's mother, a Florida Hiway Patrol trooper, had turned down a plea bargain arrangement which would have allowed Tate to serve a three-year term for second-degree murder and insisted on going to trial in hopes of an acquittal. After the conviction the prosecution openly joined Tate's plea for leniency in sentencing, and even offered to help in his appeal. The trial judge criticized the prosecution for compromising the integrity of the adversarial system, and said that if the prosecution felt that life imprisonment were not warranted, they should not have charged him with murder in the first place. In January 2004, a state appeals court overturned his conviction on the basis that his mental competency had not been evaluated before the trial. Tate was released on one year's house arrest and 10 years probation.

I think that a compromise between the first and final ruling would have been fair. Life without parol is too extreme a punishment for a decision made by a child, however house arrest and probation are far too lenient. Lionel Tate should have had either a shorter sentence to prison or life with possible parol based on behavioral improvement. I think that Tate was definitely old enough to make better decisions but young enough that he should not be paying for his previous lapse in judgement for the rest of his life. Still, if Tate had been an adult when he committed such a crime, the outcome would have been more severe; probably life imprisonment without parol. This is because adults have a better concept of choices they make and their consequences.