Throwing the Book at Kids

By Amanda Ripley

We will never know what vision 12-year-old Lionel Tate had of himself when he battered a 6-year-old girl to death two years ago in South Florida, pummeling her so thoroughly that her liver split in half. Was he pretending to be a pro wrestler, the kind who merrily body-slam their opponents without really hurting them? Or was he acutely aware of the damage he was inflicting? Likewise, we may not get the satisfaction of knowing if, across the country in California, 15-year-old Andy Williams truly understood what it meant to shoot and to kill when he opened fire on his classmates in that Santee school bathroom.

What we do know is that the courts in California and Florida do not trouble themselves much with determining the motives of those usually considered to be still incapable of adult reasoning. Like most other states, both have enacted laws over the past decade to ensure that boys like Tate and Williams get tried as adults. That's why Tate was sentenced last week to life in prison without the possibility of parole--perhaps the first time a life sentence has been imposed for a crime committed at such a young age.

Yet something strange is happening in the aftermath of Tate's trial. The public that applauded the laws that ordained his sentence was stunned at the image of the pudgy boy crying as he was told he'd be put away for life. And people involved in the case are acting just as remorsefully: prosecutor Ken Padowitz, after doing his job so well, has vowed to ask Florida Governor Jeb Bush to commute the sentence. Bush, who has signed some of the toughest juvenile-crime legislation in the country, has promised to consider it.

That conflicted reaction, even to an admittedly extreme case, is one glimmer of what legal experts describe as a looming backlash against the tough-on-juvenile-crime bills that politicians scrambled to enact over the past 10 to 15 years. "More states are looking at the impact of what they did," says Shay Bilchik, executive director of the Child Welfare League of America. "They're hearing from their judges, prosecutors and child advocates that we're giving up on way too many kids."

Between 1992 and 1997, all but six states made it easier to try kids as adults. Research showing higher recidivism rates among youths sent through the adult system failed to slow the trend. Even when juvenile-crime rates began to decline in the early '90s, fear of teenage "predators" lingered. States lowered the age at which kids get shifted into the adult system and broadened the definition of so-called adult crimes. They streamlined the process that held sway for much of the last century, whereby a juvenile-court judge decided each child's fate. In more than half the states, certain juvenile offenders now go to adult court without any hearings at all. Once Tate's mother rejected a plea offer and the jury reached a guilty verdict, Broward County Judge Joel Lazarus had little choice but to sentence Tate to life.

In California a referendum approved by 62% of voters last year requires that juveniles as young as 14 be tried as adults in murder cases. Prop. 21 will probably seal Williams' fate. One part of the new law was blocked in February, when an appeals court ruled that prosecutors had been granted too much power to send kids to adult court. But even if the state supreme court upholds the law, some lawyers from both sides of the aisle hope a compromise will be found somewhere between no judicial discretion and too much. Says attorney William La Fond, who challenged Prop. 21 in court: "In the old scheme, the defendant would get out when he was 25 years old. Prop. 21 says, 'Throw him in prison forever, no questions asked.' We need to ask if there's a middle ground." Determining whether a child is young enough to redeem himself may not be a numerical equation.

--By Amanda Ripley. With reporting by David S. Jackson/Los Angeles

With reporting by DAVID S. JACKSON/LOS ANGELES