What to do if 7-year-old boy killed half sister?
Authorities say the child beat the 7-month-old to death and shows little remorse. They are unsure whether to file charges or take another tack.
By BRADY DENNIS, Times Staff Writer
Published June 2, 2005
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TAMPA - A 7-year-old boy viciously beat his infant half sister to death last month, according to police, and now officials are wrestling with how - or if - to prosecute such a young child.
The death investigation was made public on Wednesday. The boy kicked and punched his 7-month-old half sister, Jayza Laney Simms, and hit her in the face with a 2 by 4, Tampa police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said.
She said the boy lives in Lakeland with his mother, and on May 22 visited his father, his father's girlfriend and their two daughters in East Tampa. The boy was jealous of the attention showered on the girl, she said, and angry because she wouldn't stop crying.
The boy came outside and told his father and his father's girlfriend that the little girl was bleeding, police said. The parents found her with a bloody nose, and she wasn't breathing. She was pronounced dead on arrival at St. Joseph's Hospital.
McElroy said the boy initially denied beating the girl. But after investigators reviewed autopsy results and confirmed that the boy's father and the girlfriend had been outside at the time, they confronted him again.
That's when he confessed, shocking even veteran detectives.
Never had they seen a crime in which such a young child had shown "so much violence and so little remorse," McElroy said. "You assume they've seen it all, then this case comes along."
The case marks new territory for the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office, which now must decide what charges, if any, are in order, and whether to try the boy as an adult.
"We have never seen a case even close to this one," said spokeswoman Pam Bondi. "There's just a lot of new issues."
She said prosecutors are examining the case and plan to discuss the legal issues in coming weeks. She offered no timetable for a decision. In the meantime, the boy is not in custody and is living in Lakeland with his mother. His name was not released by police.
One issue prosecutors must consider is whether the boy is competent to stand trial. Some states forbid children under a certain age from being prosecuted as adults. But more than 20 states, including Florida, have no age barrier when it comes to murder cases.
Just because the state can charge the boy with murder doesn't mean that's the right path, said Marsha Levick, legal director of the Juvenile Law Center, a Philadelphia-based organization that advocates for children in the court system.
"It's hard to imagine he has the mental capacity to form the necessary criminal intent to be charged," Levick said. "It's absolutely inconceivable that he could be competent to stand trial anywhere. He wouldn't understand anything that's going on."
Levick helped guide the legal appeal for Lionel Tate, the Florida boy who was 12 when he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the killing of a 6-year-old playmate in 1999. His conviction was overturned on appeal in 2004. (Tate, now 18, was arrested last week and accused of pulling a gun on a pizza deliveryman.)
Still, Levick said the boy should be held responsible for his half sister's death. She said alternate approaches - juvenile detention centers, psychiatric counseling, child welfare or dependency court - deserve serious consideration.
She pointed to university studies that show children tried as adults often end up more troubled and more likely to commit crimes again than those sentenced as juveniles.
"Kids do need to be held accountable," she said. "But we need to think about, what does that mean and what's the best way to do that?"
This week, police said a 9-year-old girl in New York fatally stabbed an 11-year-old friend with a steak knife after an argument over a ball. Neighbors and classmates said they had seen the girl act out violently in the past.
The 7-year-old boy's mother said he had shown signs of violence, too. McElroy said the mother told police that after she enrolled him in a karate class a couple of years ago, he started acting aggressively and beating up other children at school. She said she moved him to a karate class with older, bigger children, and that seemed to quell his aggression.
The New York Times, in a story about the New York murder, quoted a Boston college professor who said that since 1976, on average, about six children under the age of 10 have committed murder or nonnegligent homicide each year in the United States.
In fact, it has happened before in the bay area. In 1983, two sons of a babysitter, ages 7 and 9, were arrested on charges that they killed an 8-month-old girl in St. Petersburg.
The younger boy testified against his older brother. During his trial, the older boy read Popeye comic books and said he thought a jury was "something you wear around your neck."
He was convicted of first-degree murder. The Florida Supreme Court threw out the conviction, saying the boy might not have been mentally competent to stand trial. In 1986, at age 11 and facing a retrial, the boy pleaded guilty and was sentenced to remain in a state youth facility until he was 19. His younger brother was housed at the same facility.
Many local officials Wednesday said they cannot recall a 7-year-old facing the possibility of a murder charge. Levick said she remembers only one younger offender, a 6-year-old Michigan boy who fatally shot a 6-year-old classmate in 2000.
Prosecutors decided not to charge the boy, saying he couldn't form the intent to commit crimes. A judge later ordered him into foster care, but not before he was called into a courtroom to testify about the shooting. According to news reports, he was too short to be seen over the witness stand.
Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report.
[Last modified June 2, 2005, 01:08:10] |
