The Sentence and The Controversy
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.
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.
Read more about this topic: Lionel Tate
Famous quotes containing the words sentence and/or controversy:
“I felt that he, a prisoner in the midst of his enemies and under the sentence of death, if consulted as to his next step or resource, could answer more wisely than all his countrymen beside. He best understood his position; he contemplated it most calmly. Comparatively, all other men, North and South, were beside themselves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
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