Girl's killer, 15, gets life term

©Associated Press

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 21, 1999

BARTOW -- A 15-year-old was sentenced Friday to life in prison with no chance of parole for beating and stabbing an 8-year-old neighbor whose body was found a week later stuffed in the frame of his water bed.

Joshua Phillips was tried as an adult July 7 and convicted the next day of first-degree murder

Joshua Phillips listens Friday as his mother reads a statement during his sentencing hearing in Polk County. Phillips was convicted of murdering an 8-year-old neighbor. [AP photo]

in the Nov. 3 death of Maddie Clifton. The girl lived across the street from him in a Jacksonville neighborhood.

Phillips even pretended to help in the neighborhood search for Maddie that went on for days when there was hope she was still alive. On Nov. 10, Melissa Phillips, investigating a foul odor in her son's room, found Maddie's body in the water bed. Joshua Phillips, then 14, was arrested at school.

Phillips, standing with his head bowed Friday, showed no emotion when told he would not be sentenced as a juvenile but as an adult, and would spend the rest of his life in prison.

"I do not perceive you to be a child," Circuit Judge Charles Arnold said. "Your monstrous act made you an adult."

The judge cited a biblical passage from Luke, who quote

Maddie Clifton

s Jesus as saying: "It would be better if a millstone were hung around your neck and that you were thrown into the sea than to cause harm to a child."

Arnold went on to say: "I'm certain that on your judgment day, you, Joshua Patrick Phillips, will be given a harsher sentence than I could impose."

The sentencing came after emotional pleas from both families. Maddie's parents and her 12-year-old sister, Jessica, sat across the courtroom in the jury box facing Phillips. Phillips' parents and two stepbrothers sat near the teen, who kept his head bowed during most of the hearing.

Phillips lifted his eyes briefly as he entered the courtroom and smiled at his mother. She smiled back.

The Phillips family urged leniency. His father, Steve Phillips, called it "ludicrous and obscene" to prosecute a murder charge.

His mother expressed sorrow to the Cliftons and said her heart aches when she looks out her kitchen window to their house and thinks of what they are going through.

"I'm sorry about their grief, but I cannot repair their heartbreak any more than I can repair our own," she said.

Maddie's family told the judge of their pain -- the impact of a murder that "was cruel and senseless and took Maddie from us all," in the words of Steve Clifton, her father.

Maddie's mother, Sheila, talked about a little girl who was effervescent, giggly, loving.

"No one or nothing can look up at me with those big brown eyes," she told the judge. "Pictures and memories, that's all I've got."

Because he was 14 at the time of the slaying, Phillips faced a maximum sentence of life in prison. Florida law bars the death penalty for killers under 16.

Phillips never denied killing Maddie.

He told police he accidentally hit her in the eye with a baseball as they played in his back yard. He panicked at her screams and was scared his father would punish him, he said.

So he dragged Maddie into his bedroom. He smashed her in the head with a bat to stop her from screaming and when she kept moaning, he grabbed a knife and stabbed her in the throat, he said.

He shoved her under his water bed and went to wash up. Phillips still heard moaning. He pulled Maddie from the bed and stabbed her until she stopped breathing, detectives said.

The trial was moved 200 miles to Polk County because of intense publicity in Jacksonville. Testimony took one day. The defense presented no witnesses. The water bed where Maddie's body was hidden for seven days was reconstructed in the courtroom.

Florida Department of Corrections officials said Phillips won't be the first teen to serve life -- 87 others have been sentenced for crimes committed when they were ages 13 to 15.

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