D.A. Hedges on Pressing Charges in Death of Boy in School Fight

Five months after 13-year-old Stephan Corson was killed in a schoolyard fight in Palmdale, the district attorney’s office has yet to decide whether charges should be filed against the boy who threw the fatal punch.

Both families in the case say the inaction has been wrenching. Stephan’s mother said she aches for justice for her dead son. And the father of the other boy insists his 14-year-old son fought in self-defense and should have been told by now that he won’t be charged with murder.

“This delay is beyond ridiculous,” said the 14-year-old’s father, whose name is being withheld to protect his son’s identity. “When I talked to the sheriff’s deputies, they said it would be a week or two before we knew what the D.A. was going to do. That was a couple months ago.”

According to Los Angeles County sheriff’s reports, Stephan and the other boy exchanged words in class after a paper-throwing incident Nov. 19 at Juniper Intermediate School. When class let out, Stephan attacked the other boy, investigators said. The other boy fought back, slugging Stephan in the face and knocking him to the pavement, where he died.

The key question that prosecutors must now answer is whether the 14-year-old was acting in self-defense at the moment he struck Stephan with the fatal blow. Some children in the schoolyard have said the fight was being broken up when the other boy hit Stephan.

Alan Yochelson, head juvenile prosecutor for north Los Angeles County, said in an interview earlier this week that he has spent “just 10 minutes” on the fight case because he has been swamped with other cases.

Yochelson said he needs more time to review accounts from 25 witnesses and to study the lengthy autopsy report, which found Stephan died as a result of being punched.

Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti said he sympathizes with the family of the 14-year-old boy. The boy’s father said his son has had nightmares he will be sent to a prison for grown-ups.

“I know his parents want us to resolve this thing, and of course we don’t want to hang them out to dry,” Garcetti said. “But we have to be thorough.”

Through a spokeswoman, Yochelson said Thursday that he plans to make a decision by today.

The case has been closely followed in Palmdale, 50 miles north of Los Angeles. Because Stephan was African American and the other boy is white, it has split some people along racial lines. Stephan’s family and activists in the black community have raised concerns that the Palmdale School District and the district attorney’s office have been lenient on the other boy because he is white.

Both the school district and prosecutors deny this. The boy was removed from school immediately after the incident and expelled from school in February, though the district is now home-schooling him.

Last month, Mary Corson filed a $10-million wrongful death lawsuit against the school district, contending that the fatal fight was a result of poor supervision. Her lawyer, Melanie E. Lomax, a former president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, said the delay in resolving the criminal case is “bewildering.”

“This is not a particularly complicated case. One boy killed another in a fight,” Lomax said. “It’s time to make some decisions so Mary can go on with her life.”

Sheriff’s detectives wrapped up the bulk of their investigation in December but waited until early February, when the final autopsy was finished, to forward the entire case file to the district attorney’s office, authorities said.

That file, which includes tape-recorded witness statements, has been sitting in Yochelson’s office since Feb. 11, said Sandi Gibbons, a Garcetti spokeswoman.

Cases in which there is no one in custody--the 14-year-old boy is living with his father in Palmdale--are often dealt with after cases involving suspects being held in jail pending charges, Gibbons said. She said the two months that has elapsed since February is not considered a long delay in making a decision on a serious case.

Stephan’s mother says the other boy should be charged with manslaughter because he hit Stephan after a teacher stepped between them and self-defense was no longer an issue.

“I just don’t get why everybody else’s case can be resolved so quickly when my son hasn’t had any justice yet,” said Mary Corson, a medical transcriptionist.

The boy’s father said his son is terrified of fighting.

“He’s the one who got attacked coming out of a classroom,” said the father, who added that the fight had not been broken up when his son knocked Stephan to the ground.

The two families have never talked. They live on opposite sides of town, Stephan’s mother in a wood-paneled apartment across from a dirt lot, and the other boy and his father in a new home along a freshly laid cul-de-sac.

“Part of me wants to call her and tell her how sorry I am,” said the boy’s father. “But I know that, when I hear her voice, I wouldn’t know what to say.”