Boy, 12, Takes Deal in Fla. Tot's Murder, Gets 18 Months
In a case that lawyers hope will have a happier ending than that of another Florida 12-year-old convicted of murdering a much smaller child, a boy accused of beating a toddler to death with a baseball bat while babysitting her has pleaded no contest to second-degree murder.
Under the plea deal, the unnamed boy, who could have been sentenced to life in prison if charged and convicted as an adult, was sentenced yesterday to 18 months in a treatment facility for high-risk youths, reports the Miami Herald.
The case, which is similar to that of Lionel Tate, who at one point was sentenced to life in prison for murdering a 6-year-old in Florida when he was 12, will have a happier ending, defense lawyers hope.
Tate, who is now in his early 20s, got another chance when his life sentence was overturned and he was given 10 years of probation. But he is now serving a 30-year sentence for violating that probation by committing an armed robbery of a pizza deliveryman.
Like the mother of the boy in the current case, Tate’s mother initially opposed a plea bargain that called for him to serve a relatively minimal amount of time in a juvenile facility. In this case, though, the mother—who has insisted her son is innocent, despite his reported confession to police—apparently changed her mind. She declined to comment after a Broward County judge sentenced her son yesterday.
”He got a second chance on life today,” Sandra Perlman, one of the boy’s public defenders, says of her client. ‘We are looking for a ‘happily ever after’ story.”
Additional details about the case are discussed in an earlier ABAJournal.com post.
Additional coverage:
Sun-Sentinel: “Lauderhill boy accused of fatal beating pleads no contest”
CNN (2001): “Father of Lionel Tate urges leniency”
