Tuesday, March 13, 2001
Remember when you were 14 and Christmas or your birthday or the last day of school was a month away? A month seemed like a lifetime.
Imagine, then, what it must have been like for 14-year-old Lionel Tate of Miami the other day when he heard a judge sentence him to life in prison for the beating death of his 6-year-old playmate.
We have traditionally been tough on crime. We've favored most mandatory sentences, three-strikes measures, capital punishment and high bonds for persons charged with violent crimes, particularly when they are repeat offenders.
And we haven't forgotten the victim in this case. Tiffany Eunick was a small 6-year-old. Lionel Tate was a large 12-year-old. He pummeled her. She had a fractured skull, a broken rib and a crushed liver.
Still, while Lionel deserves to be punished, and punished severely, life in prison without parole goes too far.
Even the prosecutor is reluctant to see the boy's life written off at this age, but he pursued and won a first-degree murder conviction, knowing -- though the jury may not have -- that the charge carried a mandatory life sentence.
Missed opportunity: And Lionel's lawyer now says he'd "give anything" to get back an offer the prosecution made before the trial. A plea of guilty to second-degree murder would have brought three years confinement in a juvenile detention center and 10 years of probation.
The defense failed in its novel "The WWF made me do it" strategy. The prosecution convinced the jury and the judge that Lionel wasn't pretending to be a television wrestler when he beat Tiffany to death. Normally, we'd say that when a defendant gambles and loses, so be it. But in this case, the boy wasn't calling the shots, his mother was. It was she who was supposed to be baby-sitting the dead girl, and it was she who rejected a plea bargain because she couldn't bear the thought of being away from her son for three years.
She apparently thought he should be able to batter a child to death without paying any real price. Maybe she should do the time.
Eventually Lionel's fate will be in the hands of Gov. Jeb Bush, from whom clemency will be sought.
It seems to us that something between the pre-trial offer and the post-conviction sentence would be appropriate. Three years or four years in a juvenile center, followed by more time in a penitentiary seems about right.
Lionel Tate shouldn't die in prison, but he should mark no less than his 21st birthday there. That's harsh treatment, but not as harsh as he gave Tiffany Eunick. Some might even call it lenient.