Slain boy's father gets life, no parole

The Largo man could have been sentenced to death for his conviction in the death of his 3-month-old son.

By WILLIAM R. LEVESQUE

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 12, 2000

LARGO -- Jared L. Dougherty said he wanted to walk in heaven with the 3-month-old son he killed by slamming the boy into an apartment floor.

But not right away.

After pleas by Dougherty's attorneys and family members to spare the Largo man's life, a Pinellas circuit judge agreed Thursday that the death penalty wasn't the appropriate sentence for the March 1999 killing of Dougherty's son, Brennan.

Judge Brandt Downey III instead sentenced Dougherty to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Dougherty's attorneys, assistant public defenders John Carballo and Dean Livermore, waived Dougherty's right to have a jury recommend a sentence of either life or death, instead leaving it up to the judge.

A jury convicted Dougherty, 23, of first-degree murder after a five-day trial that ended in early April.

"I don't think there is any doubt that he is truly remorseful about what happened to his son," said the judge, who noted that but for a short, dark period in Dougherty's life, "Jared Dougherty is basically a good person."

Prosecutor Tim Hessinger told jurors that Dougherty grabbed Brennan out of his highchair and slammed the boy into the floor of a Largo apartment he shared with Kathryn Spencer, who is his girlfriend and the boy's mother. Defense attorneys acknowledged Dougherty killed the child after a night of drinking and taking drugs. But they said Dougherty, immature and unable to understand his actions, just snapped and was guilty of manslaughter, not murder.

Spencer and Dougherty had argued the night of the killing. And defense lawyers said he believed that if he harmed the child slightly, Spencer would return to him in order to care for Brennan.

Hessinger told jurors that the father delayed calling paramedics, instead waiting 15 minutes until he was able to reach Spencer, who herself finally called 911.

And the prosecutor said the child suffered minor injuries while in Dougherty's care just two weeks before the killing.

Dougherty's mother, Melinda Mitchell, told Downey on Thursday that her son was remorseful. After Brennan's death, Dougherty helped pay funeral costs and insisted on arranging to send flowers to his son's grave, she said.

A note dictated by Dougherty was attached to the flowers that said, "To my little boy: I will walk again with you someday. Love, daddy."

On New Year's Eve, Dougherty made $150,000 bail, a rarity in a death penalty case. He got a job at a hotel and helped Spencer pay her bills while he awaited trial.

He traveled out of state to visit his ailing grandparents. While visiting Indiana, lawyers said, he was baptized.

Dougherty, his lawyers said, was concerned that if he didn't do so, he would be unable to visit his son in heaven upon his own death.

While free, he never attempted to flee, a fact Downey noted in sentencing him. The day of the jury verdict, Dougherty came to court knowing he might never leave again a free man.

"You could probably send him out to get lunch right now," Jim Mitchell, Dougherty's stepfather, told the judge. "And you probably wouldn't have to worry about him coming back."

As Carballo, the defense attorney, noted to Downey, Dougherty knows that he will never again go out for lunch as a free man.

"Life is life," the attorney said. "It means the same plastic trays every single day with no choice of food . . . with the same small window to look out of the rest of his life."

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