Florida Teen Pleads Guilty to Killing Young Girl

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. —  On the eve of his 17th birthday, Lionel Tate came back to court to plead guilty Thursday to beating a playmate to death when he was 12, but did not respond to pleas from the victim’s mother that he admit that the young girl’s death was no accident.

“This was not child’s play. That was not roughhousing. This was a brutal murder,” an emotional Dewesse Eunick-Paul told the court, eulogizing daughter Tiffany Eunick, 6, as “a beautiful first-grade angel.”

“Lionel Tate should accept responsibility for my daughter’s murder, not accept responsibility for an accident,” said Eunick-Paul as Tate sat in silence. Tate’s lawyer has said the youth has apologized privately, but Eunick-Paul said the last conversation she could recall with her daughter’s killer was when he came to her house and asked if he could have Tiffany’s toys because she was dead.

In what may be the final act of a tragedy that tore two once-friendly families apart, Tate pleaded guilty Thursday to second-degree murder in Tiffany’s death in exchange for a three-year prison term -- time he has already served -- and one year of house arrest, 10 years’ probation, 1,000 hours of community service and regular counseling.

He had been convicted of first-degree murder in 2001 and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. But the results of that jury trial, which sparked international debate and outrage about the treatment of young offenders in Florida, were thrown out by a state appellate court in December, leading to a renewed plea offer from prosecutors that included a reduced prison sentence.

The grounds for the action by Florida’s 4th District Court of Appeal was a finding that Tate’s ability to understand court proceedings hadn’t been adequately verified before the trial. Before Thursday’s hearing, a court-appointed legal guardian and psychologist examined Tate and reported him legally competent for the current proceedings.

“You feel it’s in your best interest to plead guilty to the charge of murder in the second degree?” state Circuit Judge Joel T. Lazarus asked Tate.

“Yes, sir,” replied Tate, dressed in a tan shirt and suit.

Tate has spent three years in county jail and a maximum-security Florida prison for young offenders. Since Monday, when he was freed on bond, the boy has been back in the Pembroke Park townhouse where he had lived with his mother, a trooper with the Florida Highway Patrol.

“I’m sure you feel a great weight has been lifted from your shoulders,” the judge said after approving the plea arrangement. “But a new and different weight has now been placed upon you. For the first time in three years, you have the opportunity to make decisions. You have to follow the rules of society, obviously.”

Failing to respect his end of the legal bargain, the judge warned Tate, could result in his returning to prison for life. “Good luck,” Lazarus said. “So many are sincere in the desire to see you do well.”

In the courtroom, Tate uttered little beyond respectful, monosyllabic replies to the judge’s questions. Reporters and camera crews were waiting outside the Broward County Courthouse, but Richard Rosenbaum, Tate’s lawyer, would not let his client address them. Tate’s mother made a brief statement after the hearing, saying it wasn’t the proper time to answer the accusations of Eunick-Paul, a former friend and fellow immigrant from Jamaica.

“This is not a day for me to respond and to bash Dewesse because I know she is grieving as much as I am,” said Kathleen Grossett-Tate. “I have done what I could do as a mother. And any mother would fight for their child. Lionel’s fight is over, in this chapter. But now we can grieve for Tiffany.”

In court, Rosenbaum said his client was remorseful, and had matured in custody. “By entering the guilty plea, Lionel has accepted the responsibility for Tiffany’s death,” he said.

Eunick-Paul accused Grossett-Tate of lying and deceiving her about her daughter’s death, which occurred in July 1999 as Tiffany and Lionel were watching television in Lionel’s home and Grossett-Tate was reportedly sleeping upstairs. Tate originally said he had been imitating the moves of pro wrestlers he saw on TV when he repeatedly beat the much smaller girl, but subsequently changed his story to say he accidentally landed on Tiffany when he jumped from the stairs.

“I so much believe in God, and for that, I have forgiven you, Lionel,” Eunick-Paul said in one of the most dramatic moments of the hearing. “I have forgiven Lionel for brutally murdering my daughter.”

Tiffany’s father, however, was not so magnanimous. “He killed my daughter and made it look like an accident,” said Mark James, speaking at the hearing via telephone link from Jamaica. “I do think that Lionel Tate is a killer, and that he will kill again.”

Numerous people involved in the case, including former prosecutor Ken Padowitz, who now represents Eunick-Paul, and Michael Hursey, an attorney for Grossett-Tate, said the boy’s original trial and life sentence demonstrated how Florida laws must be changed to prevent overly harsh punishment of minors.

But prosecutor Chuck Morton said it would be wrong to make Tate a “poster boy” for malfunctions of the juvenile justice system.

The autopsy and police reports showed Tiffany was so brutally beaten her skull was fractured, part of her liver detached and her kidneys and pancreas injured.

“The actions and conduct of Mr. Tate were not juvenile. They were those of a brutal adult,” Morton said during the hearing. “I hope to God he does rehabilitate himself and that he does not injure anyone else.”