Lionel Tate
| Lionel Tate | |
|---|---|
Photo of Tate
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| Born |
January 30, 1987 Broward County, Florida, United States |
| Criminal penalty | 30 years in state prison |
| Criminal status | Incarcerated at the Apalachee Correctional Institution in Sneads, Florida |
| Conviction(s) | Second degree murder, probation violation and armed robbery |
Lionel Alexander Tate (born January 30, 1987) is the youngest American citizen ever sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. In January 2001, when Tate was 13, he was convicted of first-degree murder for the 1999 battering death of 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick in Broward County, Florida.
On July 28, 1999 Tate was left alone with Eunick, who was being babysat by Tate's mother, Kathleen Grossett-Tate. While the children were downstairs playing, Tate's mother called to them to be quiet. Tate came up 45 minutes later to say that Eunick was not breathing. He stated that they were wrestling, he had her in a head lock and slammed the child's head into the table.
Tate was convicted of killing Eunick by stomping on her so forcefully that her liver was lacerated. Her other injuries included a fractured skull, fractured rib and swollen brain. These injuries were characterized by the prosecution as "similar to those she would have sustained by falling from a three-story building." In sentencing Tate to life imprisonment, Judge Joel T. Lazarus of Broward County Circuit Court said that "The acts of Lionel Tate were not the playful acts of a child [...] The acts of Lionel Tate were cold, callous and indescribably cruel."
The sentence was controversial because Tate was 12 years old at the time of the death, and his victim was 6. He was the youngest person in modern US history to be sentenced to life imprisonment, bringing broad criticism on the treatment of juvenile offenders in the justice system of the State of Florida.
Michael Eric Dyson commented in January 2004:
In this country, we would rather put Lionel Tate in prison for a mistake he made at twelve or thirteen years old, dooming him to a life of perpetual suffering in an adult situation where we're not rehabilitating him, [but instead] inculcating in him the very values we want to avoid. We're teaching him, and others like him, how to become the very thing we say we want to reform. And at the same time, we allow other people in our society, who don't have darker skin, to plea bargain when they've stolen millions and millions of dollars out of the purses of ordinary people.
Tate's mother, a Florida Highway Patrol trooper, and the defense had turned down a plea bargain arrangement which would have allowed Tate to serve a three-year term for second-degree murder in a youth facility followed by 10 years' probation but instead, his mother insisted on going to trial in hopes of an acquittal.
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