On Saturday, Judge Waddell Wallace of Duval County Circuit Court
ruled that 12-year-old Cristian Fernandez must remain jailed without bond until Wednesday over a charge that Fernandez killed his 2-year-old half-brother David Galarriago.
The Florida Times-Union reports (same link): "His mother, Biannela Susana, 25, who gave birth to Fernandez when she was 12, is also being held in jail on charges of culpable negligence in the aggravated manslaughter of the younger boy." That newspaper also had this follow-up for today: "
'Baby-faced' boy's case highlights debate about trying juveniles":
Fernandez instantly became the youngest person in city history to face first-degree murder charges. And if convicted, he faces life without parole — although Corey emphasizes that wasn't the goal of what happened last week.
(State Attorney Angela) Corey explained Friday how she went from seeing the boy in juvenile court to charging him as an adult. She and her staff spent two months investigating him, having experts test him, discussing options and meeting with the defense.
In the end, she says, one of the key factors was this: juvenile jurisdiction ends at age 21.
"My fear is that whatever has happened to this young man in his short time on Earth cannot be solved in eight years," she said.
Some of what happened has become public. When Cristian Fernandez was born, his mother was 12 and his grandmother was on drugs. At age 2, he and his mother both ended up in foster care in South Florida. Through the years, there was physical and sexual abuse. And last year, when police came to arrest his stepfather, he shot and killed himself in front of the family.
Now for those of you who argue "he's just a kid, he can change," the FTU story notes the cases of Lionel Tate and Nathaniel Abraham, other juveniles who got non-life sentences for murder only to commit more crimes post-release:
It is one that has prompted comparisons to the case of Lionel Tate. In 1999, at age 12, he was charged with first-degree murder for the battering death of a 6-year-old girl in South Florida. Tate's family turned down a plea bargain.
And at age 14, he became the youngest American sentenced to life without parole — a sentence that was overturned by a state appeals court.
Tate returned to prison in 2008, following an armed robbery arrest.
The youngest American ever convicted of murder was Nathaniel Abraham. He wasn't much younger than Fernandez — 11 years and 9 months — when he used a borrowed .22-caliber rifle to shoot an 18-year-old stranger at a suburban Detroit convenience store in 1997. A jury found him guilty of second-degree murder. A judge sentenced him to seven years at a maximum-security juvenile detention center.
Abraham also returned to prison after trying to sell Ecstasy out of the trunk of his car.
Nearly everyone agrees that the best-case scenario is to prevent children from committing violent acts. The debate is what to do after those acts happen. And many argue that a 12-year-old should never be tried as an adult, or face a life sentence.
"There is no 12-year-old on Earth that acts like an adult," said Terry Maroney, Vanderbilt University associate professor of law. "They can do things that can be extremely shocking, but they're still 12-year-olds."
So should Fernandez be imprisoned for life because his action makes him pose a threat to society, or is he a victim of unfortunate family circumstances and deserving and capable of passing a rehabilitation program? I personally think that if Fernandez were from a middle-class suburban family and did this he'd probably need the big book thrown at him. A similar case to Fernandez' was decided in Detroit last summer: for murder and robbery, 13-year-old
DeMarco Harris was sentenced to juvenile detention until a court re-evaluation at age 21 that will result in either release or life imprisonment without parole.
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