Teen’s Killers Were Abused by Stepfather, Mother Says

Her voice soft but steady, Sharry Holland, the mother of two Thousand Oaks teenagers convicted in the stabbing death of an Agoura Hills youth, testified Monday that their former stepfather physically and verbally abused both boys during her eight-year marriage.

The abuse instilled a fiercely protective attitude that may have prompted her eldest child, Jason, now 19, to strike out at the two boys fighting with his younger brother Micah, 16, Holland said. Jason wounded one youth and killed 16-year-old Jimmy Farris, the son of a Los Angeles police officer, with a knife during the May 1995 fight.

Jason and two of his friends face life in prison without parole, while Micah’s age may bring him a lighter sentence.

During a sentencing hearing in Malibu Municipal Court on Monday, Holland said when her ex-husband would focus his attention on Micah, berating him and at times hitting him, Jason would intervene.

“He would step in between and usually the anger would divert to him,” the Thousand Oaks mother said. “Then he would get hit or punished severely.”

Last spring, Jason’s nose was broken by his stepfather during a particularly violent fight, she said.

Just a few weeks after that incident, the two Holland brothers, along with some friends, went to the backyard fort of Michael McLoren, who was 16 at the time, planning to steal some marijuana he had stashed there. That led to the brawl that claimed Farris’ life and left McLoren seriously injured.

According to Jason’s testimony during the trial, he saw McLoren holding Micah in a headlock during the fight in the darkened fort and barreled to his rescue, attacking McLoren with the knife to protect his brother.

Sharry Holland’s testimony elicited no sympathy from Los Angeles County prosecutor Jeffrey Semow, who hammered away at the abuse theory during an aggressive cross-examination of the boys’ mother. His voice sharp, he asked her if she considered it protective behavior on Jason’s part to have brought his younger brother to McLoren’s house to steal his pot.

Semow finished his terse cross-examination by asking Sharry Holland if she had ever called the police because of Jason. She said she had, recounting a night when Jason had wanted to go out and she had told him no.

“I blocked the doorway, we shouted at each other, I slapped him, he kicked me,” she said.

“He kicked you in the stomach area, didn’t he?” asked Semow.

“Yes,” she replied.

In an interview outside the courtroom, Holland said that she had no objection to talking about the time Jason had kicked her.

“I didn’t mind it because it is the truth,” she said. “Of course, over the years, Jason and I had our instances.”

But she said she had been reluctant initially to talk about the issue of abuse.

“Abuse has been such a popular defense for crimes in the ‘90s I feel very uncomfortable with bringing it up,” she said. “But the point is, it’s the truth. We, Micah and Jason and I, have nothing to hide. Everything has been exposed.

“I feel very self-conscious about it,” she added. “But how can I leave that out? I’m fighting, trying to make the court understand how this could have happened.”

Holland’s revelations about her son and the abuse he suffered came at the end of a long day in court, a day that left the victim’s family and friends weary of legal tactics and supporters of the young defendants discouraged.

They watched as Judge Lawrence J. Mira tossed out motion after motion by defense attorneys. Requests that the sentencing be postponed and requests for a new trial--alleging that both the jurors and prosecutors had committed misconduct--were all rejected.

Holland took the stand during a hearing on one of the final motions, one based on a 1983 case in which a judge ruled that a sentence was cruel and unusual and did not fit the crime. Defense attorneys hope the precedent set by the so-called Dillon case could convince Mira that he has the leeway to reduce the sentences for the four convicted youths.

Three of the youths, Jason Holland, Tony Miliotti, 19, of Westlake Village and Brandon Hein, 19, of Oak Park, face minimum life sentences without parole because Farris was killed during the commission of a felony robbery. Because he was 15 at the time of the crime, Micah Holland could receive a lighter sentence of 25 years to life. A fifth youth, Chris Velardo, 18, of Oak Park, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter last fall and is awaiting sentencing.

The sentencing hearing resumes today at 9 a.m., beginning with testimony by Jason Holland’s psychiatrist.