Wrestling Defense Fails; Boy, 13, Faces Life

Rejecting a “blame pro wrestling” defense, a jury Thursday found a 13-year-old guilty of murder in the beating death of his young playmate.

Lionel Tate is believed to be the youngest person in Florida history--and one of the youngest in the nation--ever convicted of homicide in an adult court. He could face life behind bars.

The defense had contended the boy simply was imitating the violent moves he had seen his wrestling heroes perform on television and had not intended to hurt anyone. But a jury of 10 women and two men took just longer than three hours to reject second-degree murder or manslaughter verdicts and come back with the first-degree murder conviction.

When the verdict was read, Lionel said nothing. He cried quietly as he was led from the courtroom by a bailiff.

“It was horrible, really horrible,” juror Kathleen Pow-Sang said. “If there was any way that we could have gone with a lesser offense, justified it in any way, and we all wanted to . . . .”

Although precise numbers are not available, experts say there is a national trend to try juveniles as adults in certain violent crimes. For instance, a Milwaukee girl convicted of committing murder during a carjacking at age 13 received an automatic life sentence.

“This is the reactionary response to an increase in juvenile crime that began in the early 1990s,” said Laurence Steinberg, a psychologist at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Lionel was 12 in July 1999 when he admitted flinging 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick around the living room of his suburban townhouse west of Fort Lauderdale after asking her if she wanted to “play wrestling.” Lionel’s mother, a Florida Highway Patrol trooper, was asleep upstairs.

Prosector Ken Padowitz said Lionel killed Tiffany during “a brutal, savage beating” that left her with a fractured skull, lacerated liver, a broken rib, internal hemorrhaging and multiple cuts and bruises.

Lionel was 5 feet, 4 inches and 166 pounds at the time. Tiffany, a first-grader, weighed 48 pounds.

Defense attorney Jim Lewis contended that Lionel lacked the maturity to understand the consequences of his actions.

The defense tried to force several wrestling stars, including Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Steve “Sting” Borden, to testify during the trial. But Broward County Judge Joel T. Lazarus quashed the subpoenas, and the World Wrestling Federation later sued Lewis for libel.

Jurors clearly did not buy Lewis’ argument that exposure to wrestling--with its seemingly violent yet carefully choreographed moves--led Lionel to “believe that he can be like the wrestlers, and no one gets hurt.”

Lewis said that Lionel spent hours watching wrestling on television and that he considered the stars “his superheroes--like Superman, Batman. He loved to play.” At the defense table, Lionel often doodled during the trial, at times spelling out the names of his favorite wrestlers using colored pencils.

“We’ve said all along this was a hoax, and we predicted that once this ‘defense’ was presented to a jury, they would recognize that,” said attorney Jerry McDevitt, who represents the WWF.

Lionel’s mother, Kathleen Grossett-Tate, walked out of the courtroom sobbing Thursday. Tiffany’s mother, Duweese Eunick-Paul, was not present for the verdict. She and Grossett-Tate once had been close friends. Eunick-Paul later told MSNBC that she holds no anger. “I don’t hold . . . any grudges, no animosity toward them because they are the ones that have to talk to God,” she said.

Lewis appeared stunned at the verdict. “He was a playful kid,” said Lewis, tears in his eyes. “I exposed him to my kids. And I feel I’ve let him down.”

Lewis said he would appeal, citing the judge’s refusal to let him subpoena the wrestlers.

With Grossett-Tate’s agreement, Lewis earlier turned down a prosecution offer in which Lionel would have pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. That would have sent him to a juvenile facility for three years and meant 10 years on probation.

Asked about that decision after the verdict, Lewis said, “You know, it was a very difficult choice that was made with his mother. His mother basically could not bear being without this child for three years.”

Since Tiffany’s death, Lionel had been allowed to live at home, wearing an electronic monitoring device while he attended private school.

Lazarus rejected Lewis’ request that Lionel be allowed to remain at home until his March 2 sentencing. He instead ordered that the boy be held at a juvenile detention center.

Lionel, who turns 14 next week, does not face the death penalty because he is younger than 16. And a mandatory life sentence could be commuted by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush if so recommended by prosecutors. Padowitz declined to say Thursday what he would tell the governor.

“I had no expectations as to what this jury was going to do in this case,” Padowitz said outside the courtroom. “My only hope was that they had an open mind; that they could overcome sympathy and emotion and follow the law to ensure that justice was done.”

Psychologist Steinberg said the irony of the move toward tough juvenile justice “is that juvenile crime is now declining, and we do not know what the effects of this treatment are. Some of it is grandstanding, to show we’re tough on crime. But it is not a deterrent, so it seems silly.”

Under a MacArthur Foundation grant, Steinberg said, he is directing the first nationwide study to determine at what age children demonstrate an ability to understand charges against them or to help with their defense in such cases.

After the two-week-long trial, juror Pow-Sang had her own opinion. “I think that’s where the system failed. It failed for all of us that a child was in that situation in the first place. But that was out of our hands. He was already indicted for first-degree murder.”

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Times researcher Anna M. Virtue contributed to this story.