Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

With two dead, is sentence fair?

Jennifer Porter won't go to jail, and some, including the mother of two dead children, wonder if race was a factor.

By AMBER MOBLEY, JUSTIN GEORGE and REBECCA CATALANELLO
Published November 6, 2005

	[Times photo: Daniel Wallace]
	At 1 a.m. Saturday, during the last recess before receiving her sentence, Jennifer Porter sits alone at the defense table in the courtroom in Tampa.

TAMPA - One judge.

Two dead black children.

One young white woman, a former elementary school dance teacher.

Fifteen and a half hours of testimony from more than 30 witnesses.

Early Saturday morning, the judge imposed sentence.

Jennifer Porter will serve no prison time after pleading guilty to charges arising out of a March 2004 accident that killed Bryant Wilkins, 13, and his brother Durontae Caldwell, 3, and injured Aquina Wilkins, then 8, and LaJuan Davis, then 2.

Instead, Judge Emmett Lamar Battles sentenced Porter to two years of house arrest, three years of probation, 500 hours of community service work and ordered her to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

That sentence is being labeled right by some, racist by others, such as the boys' mother, Lisa Wilkins. She wanted Porter to be punished and Saturday morning's sentence wasn't enough.

"It's a race thing, that's how I see it," she said after the verdict. "If it would have happened to me, I would have been in jail.

"It don't matter. My kids are gone. That lawyer wins everything. I hope she has fun dancing in that school."

A little more than 18 months after Porter was charged with leaving the scene of an accident involving death, testimony in her sentencing hearing began Friday morning.

Porter, 29, entered into a plea deal in August that capped the amount of prison time she could receive at three years. State guidelines called for 21 months for a first-time offender for the charge.

At 1:30 a.m. Saturday, after hearing hours of testimony and impassioned closing arguments from the attorneys, it was Battles' time to speak.

"Miss Wilkins," he began, "you were right this morning when you said absolutely nothing we do here in this court today will bring your children back."

He explained that the crime Porter was being sentenced for was leaving the scene of the accident.

Nothing more.

She was not charged with killing the children.

He said he was giving great weight to the fact that this was Porter's first offense, and agreed with defense mental health experts who said Porter was "under extreme duress" at the time of the accident.

The defense painted a picture of a good girl in a bad situation, a terrified, defenseless "broken woman" whose experience was so traumatic her instinct was to crawl into a fetal position, contemplate suicide and do whatever her parents told her to do immediately after the crash.

"She does what a good girl in her culture would do. Namely, she asked her daddy what to do," said Bessel van der Kolk, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist who evaluated Porter three times since the accident.

In that regard, the judge made a point of telling Porter, "You are not being punished for the conduct of those who surround you."

Both of Porter's parents, James Greg and Lillian Porter, acknowledged in court they hadn't told their daughter to do the right thing the night of the crash.

On Friday, Porter's father said he regretted not notifying authorities earlier, and said he wiped blood off her car and stored it in the family's garage to "buy time," and that he was "trying to do whatever I could do to protect my daughter."

Jennifer Porter didn't come forward for days.

Porter's defense attorney Barry Cohen conceded that James Porter gave his daughter "bad advice that complicated this case." But he was a good man, a postal worker, who tried to teach his children right and wrong, he said.

"To suggest she's not living in hell for what she went through would be wrong," Cohen said. "Spare her the destruction of putting her in prison. Don't send a message to the community that if you come forward and do the right thing you go to jail."

But prosecutor Kim Seace said the facts of the case demand prison time.

"She made four phone calls after leaving the scene of the accident," Seace said. She drove herself to her dance studio. She may have gone home that night "absolutely suicidal" but, the next day "she went back to work to teach children."

"For 27 hours, they weren't going to tell. She wasn't going to tell," Seace said.

It wasn't until a day later, when the news reported that authorities were no longer looking for a white van but a Toyota Echo that the Porters discussed another course of action, Seace said.

And even after the family contacted an attorney, Porter didn't talk to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. "Instead," Seace said, "she held a press conference." Probation, Seace ended, "is not punishment enough."

"This case was always about one thing - nothing else - four innocent, beautiful children," said Seace. "Four innocent children, eight empty little shoes left in the roadway, where someone left them to die."

After hearing hours of testimony from Porter's family and friends describing her as a caring person and loving teacher, Wilkins' family members tried to remind the court of the goodness of the two boys who died.

"Bryant was a caring child," said Joyce Mack, mother of Bryant's best friend. "He aimed to please any figure of authority."

And more, they questioned how someone who experts said was such a good person could run over four children and not stop driving, not call the police, and go back to work the next day. "If it was a dog, most people would have stopped to help," Mack said.

"You can dial seven numbers by you can't dial three - 911?" said Wilkins' sister Debra Collins.

A probation sentence for Porter was not enough and wasn't fair, said Wilkins' father, Edward Wilkins. "If that had been a black man, he would have been in prison," he said.

Cohen doesn't see race as an issue in the case. But with the sentencing done, he said Saturday that he does see potential trouble.

Calling the sentence "just and fair," Cohen said that he hopes black leaders, and lawyers in particular, will look carefully at the evidence and the legal process that led to Battles' decision.

"The leadership has to know what they're talking about and can't wrongly or innocently fuel a fire that is particularly so emotional to begin with," Cohen said. "It would be a shame to have anybody believe that there was any injustice here."

But that's just what some area residents believe. "If (Porter) was a different race and did everything she did, she would have gotten prison time," said Victor Smith. The black father of two was at the University Area Community Park basketball court Saturday morning, in earshot of the spot on 22nd Street where Wilkins' two boys died.

Smith said he understood that Porter might have been scared to stop after the hit-and-run next to the park, often packed with people, but added she should have pulled over a block away. "But to go home for two or three days until (police) found her? And she was trying to conceal it?

"That is wild," he added. "We could have the same crimes, but a black man would get more for it. They say all this about Rosa Parks, but we still have a long time to go before we're equal. "I actually thought she was going to get three years and probation," he said.

Assistant state attorney Pam Bondi said the state was hoping for the maximum sentence - three years jail time and 10 years probation - but that the judge had legal justifications for his sentencing that are hard to appeal.

Still, Porter will basically be "in prison from her home" when she goes under community control, also known as house arrest, for two years, said Bondi.

"Under house arrest, people can't leave their home other than for reasons that are approved by the court such as work, church, doctor's appointments . . ." Bondi said.

Whether or not Porter will be allowed to drive to and from those approved places is yet to be decided.

Putting Porter in prison wouldn't do her any good, said Clinton Paris, president of the George Edgecomb Bar Association, a group of local black lawyers. "She's not really a criminal," he said, "she's a person who made a mistake."

"She exercised some bad judgment at that moment that shouldn't go to stump the rest of her life opportunities," he said.

Still, Paris, a civil lawyer, feels that Porter's actions warranted a harsher sentence - 10 years of supervision - than the one she received.

"This community has a history of coddling some people and not others, depending on who you are, what you look like and how much money you have," Paris said. "And unfortunately the criminal justice system reflects that."

"The punishment should be a reflection of the value placed on the damages. . . . It doesn't reflect the value of those kids' lives," he said. "Those kids lives were valued at five years' probation. "She complicated the damage by fleeing the scene." David Mason, a father of three, agrees.

Pushing his son Michael, 2, on a swing at Kate Jackson Recreation Center on Bristol and Rome avenues in Old Hyde Park Village on Saturday, Mason said he didn't think there was anything Porter could have done to prevent the accident.

"Her actions afterward is why she's being punished," he said. "I don't think putting that young lady in jail or prison is going to serve anyone."

Glenn Powell, 41, was also watching his two children, Shelby, 4, and Brandon, 5, at the park in Old Hyde Park Village, where children were running in water fountains.

He said if she had been scared, she should have driven a few blocks to a law enforcement substation and turned herself in.

"I'm not happy she left the scene of the crime and tried to cover things up," he said. "I think she should have done some time. What is jail? Time to reflect on things you did."

Staff writer Alexandra Zayas contributed to this report.

[Last modified November 6, 2005, 02:15:12]