A police officer is dead of multiple gunshot wounds and a defendant is charged with first-degree murder. At trial, this scenario typically ends up being a death-penalty case.
Dontae Morris, accused of killing two Tampa police officers in June, is fighting for his life. He was 24 when the officers were shot.
But 16-year-old Nicholas Lemmon Lindsey Jr., accused of fatally shooting St. Petersburg police Officer David Crawford on Monday night, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted in an adult court, thanks to his age and a U.S. Supreme court ruling in 2005. That 5-4 ruling made it unconstitutional to execute anyone who committed a capital crime before their 18th birthday.
The decision of whether to try Lindsey as an adult lies with prosecutors, and that call has not been made. There is some measure of sympathy in charging such a young man with such a heinous crime.
St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster did not celebrate Lindsey's arrest.
"This one we lost. This kid we lost," Foster said late Tuesday night. "But there are countless others that we must reach. Now we have this gaping hole, but we can heal."
Still, the mayor said, "He needs to be held accountable for his actions. He will be paying for the rest of his life."
The case is complicated by the age of the defendant. Some say he may not have understood the consequences of his actions; that he didn't get that shooting a gun at another person would end that person's life; that if he is caught – and almost certainly he would be – life as he knows it, will be over.
Lynne Schwartz, a nationally known forensic and developmental psychologist who evaluates adolescents in criminal proceedings in New York and Michigan, said understanding consequences all depends on the individual. But, she said, generally brains that make complex judgments and decisions in the heads of 16-year-olds are not as developed as the brains of a 22-year-old.
"Can a 16-year-old be capable of doing something like this?" she asked. "That depends on what consequences you're talking about. It depends on that 16-year-old's development. Not all 16-year-olds are alike and they don't' function the same way."
She said teens are different in how they process information and think things through.
"There's no way to know without evaluating this youngster," she said, "to find out what he was thinking and how he was thinking and what he was capable of."
She said the Supreme Court decision in 2005 recognizes the differences between adults and juveniles.
Lindsey is not the first teen to be charged with serious crimes in the Tampa Bay area in recent years:
Jose Walle: sentenced to a total of 92 years in prison for kidnappings and rapes in Apollo Beach and St. Petersburg in 2008. Walle was 13 when the crimes were committed. Initially, Walle was sentenced to 15 life sentences, but was resentenced after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down such sentences for juveniles in crimes not involving murder.
Kendrick Morris: awaiting sentencing in the rape and beating of an 18-year-old woman outside Bloomingdale Regional Public Library in April 2008 and the rape of a 62-year-old day care worker in Clair-Mel City in June 2007. Morris was 15 at the time of the 2007 crime.
Tavaris Knight: serving a 15-year prison sentence for a rape and kidnapping at a North Tampa park in 2000. He was 12 at the time.
Valessa Robinson: serving 20 years behind bars in the fatal stabbing of her mother at their Carrollwood home in 1998. Robinson was 15 at the time.
Tampa attorney Lyann Goudie represented Robinson at her trial. The teenager was convicted of third-degree murder.
Goudie said that some teens can understand the consequences of their actions, although studies have said people don't fully understand such ramifications until they are in their mid 20s.
"That's when people really start to get a grip of it," she said.
She said the bigger problem is the combination of guns and teenagers.
"What is a 16 year old doing with a gun?" she asked. She is sure that most people with guns never think they are ever going to use it.
"That's the problem with the gun," she said. "You take a gun to commit crime, to make people give it up easier. You say, 'I'm never going to use this gun.' But, that's not how it works.
"When you're confronted with a situation you didn't anticipate," she said, "you are going to use that gun."
She called the officer slaying and arrest of the teenager, "a very, very sad situation across the board. I don't know what the heck went down, but holy cow, for you to pull a gun is pretty unbelievable."
She said: "It's a tragedy all the way around. This police officer was just out there doing his job and he was shot and killed. And this 16-year-old, for all intents and purposes, just threw his life away. It's very, very disheartening."
The arrest of the teen shocked everyone, even the St. Petersburg police chief who was taken aback by the age of the defendant.
"It breaks my heart," Police Chief Chuck Harmon said hours after the youth was charged. "You don't expect this type of confrontation between a 16-year-old kid and a police officer to end like this. But at the same time, he has to be accountable for his actions."
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2011/feb...news-breaking/
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