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The ultimate gamble: your young son's life
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 10, 2001 If Barry Grunow had been my husband, I would want his killer in jail for the rest of his life. If Nathaniel Brazill were my son, I would want him to be treated with compassion and mercy. But I wouldn't roll the dice with his future. Last month, prosecutors offered a deal to Brazill, the 14-year-old now on trial in West Palm Beach for shooting Grunow, his seventh-grade English teacher. There'd be no trial, the prosecutors said. Instead, Brazill would plead guilty to second-degree murder and serve 25 years in prison. He'd be out as he approached middle age. His parents turned it down. His mother had second thoughts just before the boy took the stand Tuesday. She asked if the deal still was on the table. Prosecutors with a defendant in the cross hairs are not in the habit of backing down. The deal was gone. There's no doubt Nathaniel Brazill shot his teacher. The jury has to decide whether he meant to. Even if you believe that he acted out of the greatest rage and confusion, as I do, he had a choice. It wasn't much of a choice, because that gun in his hand was a paradoxical object. The immense power of a gun is very limited. There are only two ways to go. You shoot or you don't. If you shoot, you shoot another person or yourself. That is often the case with kid killers. Sure enough, a note was found addressed to Grunow -- a note that Nathaniel Brazill testified was a joke -- in which he said he'd had a terrible year, that other kids picked on him and he was thinking of killing himself. Instead, he shot his teacher, using the gun his grandfather kept in a drawer in a cookie tin. Now Nathaniel has to be held responsible. The deal Nathaniel's parents turned down would have meant a second-degree murder conviction -- that's a killing without premeditation. In a just justice system, there would be a separate sentencing scale for kids like Nathaniel Brazill. Second-degree murder committed by a kid like him would get him less than 25 years. The sentence would include serious psychiatric counseling to see if what was broken and wounded in him could be repaired. We don't have a just system. We won't get one soon. Surely, Nathaniel Brazill's parents understand this reality. Surely they are not in the grips of the worst sort of wishful thinking. But you'd have thought Lionel Tate's mother was also a clear thinker. Of all things, the Fort Lauderdale woman was a cop, a state trooper, somebody who had better than a nickel's worth of understanding of the system. She too could have averted her son's trial. In 1999, Lionel Tate, then 12, killed a 6-year-old girl, Tiffany Eunick. Lionel said he was just wrestling with Tiffany, using moves he'd seen on TV. Prosecutors offered him a deal: Plead guilty to second-degree murder and get three years in a juvenile center, a year of house arrest, probation, counseling and community service. Lionel's mother refused the deal. Her son went to trial, was convicted of first-degree murder and got the mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. The sentence made even Jeb Bush squirm. I squirm, too, but where is the common sense in these parents? Doesn't a moment come when love ceases to be blind? I don't mean to be cruel. But if you want to talk about how we mistreat children, and we do, you have to include in the discussion this habit grown-ups have of thinking their children, and theirs only, are a special case, deserving of unique rights and special treatment.
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Times columns today Mary Jo Melone Gary Shelton From the Times Metro desk Mary Jo Melone |
