Murder Defendant, 13, Claims He Was Imitating Pro Wrestlers on TV

One of the youngest defendants to face an adult murder trial in Florida has an unusual defense in the beating death of a 6-year-old family friend: Pro wrestling made him do it.

Nobody disputes that Lionel Tate, 12 at the time, smashed in Tiffany Eunick’s skull. But the boy’s attorney contends it was an accident that resulted from an intellectually immature youth imitating the wrestlers he watched on television.

The World Wrestling Federation is suing the lawyer for libel.

Tiffany’s death was one of at least four cases in 1999 in which pro wrestling was blamed after one child killed another.

Opening statements are scheduled Tuesday in Lionel’s first-degree murder trial. If the boy, now 13, is convicted, he could be sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of parole until he is 38. Jurors also could convict him on a lesser charge of homicide.

Prosecutors offered a plea deal that would have sent Lionel to a juvenile facility for three years followed by 10 years of probation. But he rejected it on the advice of his attorney, Jim Lewis, who said his client isn’t guilty of any crime.

“This was a horrible accident,” Lewis said.

Lionel, who despite his age weighed 170 pounds when Tiffany died, has the intelligence of an 8-year-old, Lewis said. He says the boy didn’t understand that professional wrestling is staged and thought that if he body-slammed someone, that person would walk away unhurt, just like on TV.

The lawyer plans to call psychologists to testify about Lionel’s intelligence.

Lewis tried to force such wrestling stars as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Terry “Hulk Hogan” Bollea and Steve “Sting” Borden to testify about how their moves are rehearsed, but Judge Joel Lazarus quashed the subpoenas.

The judge also rejected Lewis’ request to have psychologists testify about the effect of pro wrestling on children.

Wrestling Story Came Later

Prosecutor Ked Padowitz wrote in court documents that Lionel never told anyone he was imitating wrestlers until a month after the girl’s death.

Instead, Lionel originally told detectives--in a recorded interview that will be played for jurors--that he and Tiffany were playing tag and watching cartoons at his home in suburban Pembroke Park. He said he picked her up and accidentally hit her head on a coffee table.

Lionel’s mother, a Florida Highway Patrol trooper, was upstairs taking a nap at the time of the death in the summer of 1999, police said. She and Tiffany’s mother were longtime friends and often baby-sat for each other. No charges were filed against her.

Jerry McDevitt, an attorney for the WWF, said the wrestling defense is Lewis’ fabrication. The Connecticut-based federation, the nation’s top pro wrestling organization, said in its libel suit against Lewis that comments he made on national television and elsewhere defending Lionel have been false and defamatory.

“This defense would be just a joke but for the tragic consequences of his client’s actions,” McDevitt said. “It’s regrettable that when some juvenile delinquent commits a homicide that his attorney would try to make a television program the fall guy.”

Kids Can’t Always Separate Fantasy

There have been no studies specifically on the effect of pro wrestling on children, said Howard Spivak, a Boston pediatrician who chaired an American Academy of Pediatrics task force on violence. But he said most of the more than 1,000 studies on how televised violence affects children show that kids who watch the most violence are the most violent.

“Proponents of wrestling say that kids can differentiate between reality and fantasy, but we know that children are actually fairly old before they do that in any consistent way,” Spivak said.

Laurence DeGaris, a former Washington State University education professor who moonlights as a professional wrestler, believes it is wrong to blame pro wrestling for the actions of children.

Most children can tell professional wrestling is fake, said DeGaris, who works for a sports marketing company.