"This was a vicious murder. This was a slaughter of my daughter…"
~ Mark James, father of Tiffany Eunick
"He just beat my daughter mercilessly, keep beating her. He had no heart."
~ Deweese Eunick, mother of Tiffany Eunick
When 48 pound Tiffany Eunick was six years old, a 12 year-old more than triple her weight perpetrated a fatal atrocity upon her in Miramar, Florida. He inflicted injuries that contused and cut her face, fractured her skull, broke a rib, and detached her liver. Experts compared the trauma to falling from a three-story building.
Lionel Tate, now 14 years old – an age Tiffany will never reach – has been sentenced to life in prison without parole. The sentence followed after the defense rejected a plea bargain of three years in a juvenile facility and ten years probation (a term of incarceration not even equal to Tiffany's age when Tate murdered her).
Unsurprisingly, torrents of criticism have attended the sentence. On Larry King Live, Amnesty International USA Executive Director William Schulz condemned Florida's statutes in this vein as "a violation of international law" that "ruins the United States' reputation in the eyes of the international community." (Pardon my provinciality, but why should the international community's anti-Americanism and so-called law affect our polity? I know the Eurocratic Cession has that continent's sovereignties busy immolating their autonomy for the Almighty EU, but some of us benighted Americans still like the idea of self-government.)
Masses mobilize for Tate in pursuit of clemency while a massacred girl's tiny body breathes no more. As the judge who sentenced Tate observes, "Voices cry out for justice, but not for justice for Tiffany Eunick. Most letters and calls refer to this victim only as an afterthought."
I realize this case involves important issues of juvenile justice: The permanent imprisonment of a 14 year-old for a crime he committed at 12 is no trivial matter. I realize that state power in general is a formidable phenomenon that demands our critical examination.
I also realize that a precious child had her life pummeled out of her in a feral fusillade of fists and feet. At the very least, those so ardent for a commutation of Tate's sentence should study the face above before they make their pleas and see the radiance he snuffed out.
"Sometimes, the world seems topsy-turvy," writes the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in its editorial on the sentence. Indeed.
Tate inflicted over thirty injuries upon Tiffany. Let him have clemency: one year for every brutal blow.
March 17, 2001
Myles Kantor lives in Boynton Beach, Florida.
