Nate Brazill_ Sentenced to Grow__ Up in Prison

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报刊选读之校园生活之校园枪击事件及后续报道

Nate Brazill, Sentenced to Grow Up in Prison

1. The Florida teen gets 28 years for shooting his teacher. Only time will tell if the judge was harsh enough BY TIM ROCHE

2. After 14-year-old Nathaniel Brazill was convicted of second-degree murder in May for the shooting death of his favorite teacher, he rode back to the Palm Beach County Jail in silence. Tried as an adult, he had faced the possibility of being found guilty of Murder One. As he strode into the 12th-floor cell he shared with other youths accused of violent crimes, the Florida teenager could hardly imagine the life in prison awaiting him when the judge eventually sentenced him. "What up, Nate?" the others greeted him. "Saw you on TV. Coulda done worse." He laid on his bunk, crying alone in his cell. Later that night, the others crowded around the TV to watch an episode of Law & Order. It was about a school shooting, captured on video, a case just like his. Nate could not stay and watch. He retreated to his cell.

3. On Friday morning, Nate gulped silently as Circuit Judge Richard Wennet finally determined his fate: Instead of life in prison, Nate will serve 28 years, followed by another seven years of house arrest and probation. His jail buddies were right again —he could've done a lot worse. Prosecutors and relatives of teacher Barry Grunow had asked the judge to imprison him for the rest of his life. Or, at least, for 40 years.

4. Talk to school teachers about the sentence, and you can understand why they feel Nate got off lucky. Murder is murder, they say. Had he killed a police officer, another public servant, there is little doubt that he would have received life. With 29 school employees killed violently on the job since 1992, the National Education Association is now offering homicide insurance to the 2.6-million members of the union. Talk to the family of the slain teacher, and you can understand why they do not want to be walking down the street some day and bump into the killer of their loved one.

5. Still, the question remains whether the seventh-grader deserved more or less. The judge may have ordered him to get his GED and take anger-management courses in prison, but can Nate be properly rehabilitated growing up inside? How much should he suffer for one fatal mistake? He had been an honor student. He had been mild mannered and likeable, the kind of kid whom teachers and principals relied upon to help settle schoolyard disputes. He loved school, and he loved Barry Grunow.

6. On the last day of school in May 2000, Nate was sent home early because he had been throwing water balloons. He was told to leave school, before he had a chance to say goodbyes to teenager Dinora Rosales, his first serious girlfriend who only six days earlier had given him his first kiss. Fuming, he went home, got a gun belonging to his grandfather and returned to the school, where he stood outside Grunow?s classroom and demanded to see his girlfriend. Grunow did not take him seriously enough, so he cocked the gun. Then he fired one bullet, which struck Grunow in the head. As his favorite teacher lay dying, Nate ran.

7. In an interview with TIME before the jury convicted him in May, Nate said he did not intend to pull the trigger. It just happened. Afterward, he said, "I just felt like jumping into the lake and drowning myself. I was disappointed. Disappointed in myself."

8. At his emotional sentencing hearing this week, Nate read a statement as defense lawyers tried to persuade the judge to spare him life in prison. "Words cannot really explain how sorry I am," Nate told the judge, "but they're all I have." His mother, Polly Powell, blamed herself for the tragic turn in her son's life. While he may have been an A-student at school, he was surrounded by domestic abuse and alcoholism at home. She never made good choices in men, she said. The cops had gone to the family's house five times on domestic violence calls. Just months before the shooting, Powell also was diagnosed with breast cancer. "I don't know what happened with my

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baby," Powell told the judge. "We need to search ourselves as human beings and see how can we just throw away kids like this."

9. The teacher's widow, Pam Grunow, came to the sentencing hearing, carrying a quilt made by her husband's students. She told the judge, "Maybe tomorrow, another woman's husband, another little boy's daddy and another great teacher won't be sacrificed in an angry, crazy moment."

10. As for other teenage gunmen who have been incarcerated after school rampages, they received varying degrees of punishment, serving everything from two years to multiple life sentences. The 28 years handed down in Nate's case falls in the middle.

11. He will get credit for the 428 days he has served awaiting the outcome of his trial. Already, the months of confinement in an adult county jail have hardened Nate. It has forced him to turn inward in a seemingly callused, sullen and uncaring way. Teachers who see him now cannot believe how much he has changed. He also has grown; the puberty that no doubt helped drive many of his actions that fateful day, from his decision to arrive at school with flowers for a sweetheart to his pointing the gun at Grunow, have made Nate larger, broader across the shoulder, his voice deeper. He no longer looks like a child.

12．Even at 14, Nate still does not see the world like an adult. Adult inmates can often recall every detail of a crime even years afterward. Someday, Nate is likely to be serving a sentence for a crime that has receded like any childhood memory. Most people, by the time they reach their 40s, would have trouble remembering the names of seventh-grade teachers. Thirty years from now, Nate probably won't remember what Barry Grunow's face looked like. But no doubt he will remember the name. National Briefing | South: Florida: Court Upholds Boy's Sentence

A state appeals court upheld the second-degree murder conviction of a 16-year-old boy who fatally shot his English teacher on the last day of school three years ago. The Fourth District Court of Appeal also upheld the 28-year sentence given to the teenager, Nathaniel Brazill. Nathaniel, was 13 when he shot the teacher, Barry Grunow, 35, at Lake Worth Middle School on May 26, 2000, after Mr. Grunow refused to let him to talk to two friends. The youth's lawyer, David McPherrin, said he should not have been convicted of second-degree murder or sentenced as an adult. （Published: May 15, 2003 the New York Time）

Polly Powell, mother of Nathaniel Brazill, dies at 43

Polly Powell, whose son, Nathaniel Brazill, fatally shot a Lake Worth middle school teacher on the last day of school in 2000, died Friday, according to her mother, Everlina Josey. She was 43.

Powell died of a recurrence of breast cancer, an illness she first was diagnosed with in 2000.

During the trial, Powell defended her son as an honor student and a good boy, and laid the blame for his acts at her own feet.

"I don't know what happened with my baby," Powell said. "But no matter what, he's mine and I just want everyone to know that what happened in my past is what brought Nathaniel here . . . I take responsibility for that."

Powell had shared details of her troubled home life in hopes of getting her son a lenient sentence after he shot teacher Barry Grunow on May 26, 2000.

After being sent home for throwing water balloons, Brazill, then 13, sneaked back to school with a gun, went to Grunow's classroom door and demanded to see two

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students. When Grunow laughed and refused, Brazill fired. Grunow was 35 and the father of two.

At Brazill's trial, his defense attorneys showed the 13-year-old often saw his mother subjected to violence at the hands of her former husbands and boyfriends. The defense team learned that Powell had experienced domestic violence as a child.

Powell said it was especially difficult to share that part of her life with the defense team, because the family never discussed it. That silence, according to the expert witnesses called by the defense, made Brazill a "pot boiling" because he was unable to share his feelings about seeing his mother being abused.

"Maybe some other mother will get something from what I've said," she said at the time.

Brazill was tried as an adult and sentenced to 28 years in state prison. Powell said the nearly three-decade sentence was a victory, since her son could have gotten life in prison.

She vowed to fight for her son until all appeals were exhausted. Brazill is now seeking a new trial.

"I know now that my son will be coming home one day," she said after the sentencing.

Powell, along with other mothers and fathers whose sons also committed murder before they turned 18, joined Riviera Beach Mayor Thomas Masters, who is also a clergyman, on a 2003 envoy to the Vatican in an effort to help change U.S. attitudes about prosecuting teenage criminals and putting them in adult prisons.

Powell also spent time passing out gun locks in inner-city neighborhoods in the hope of preventing more killings.

Despite her son's crime, Powell's supporters said she was a good mother. She rewarded Brazill for good grades and sent him to visit relatives to experience new things. She corrected him when he used street language because she didn't want it to get in his way later in life.

"Polly Powell was a true advocate for juvenile justice," Masters said Sunday. . To know her was to love her. She always wanted to put her arms around Mrs. Grunow and let her know how sorrowful she was for what happened."

Funeral arrangements are incomplete. （7/27,2008 the Palm Beach Post News）

Nathaniel Brazill reflects on murdering his teacher

PALM BEACH- This Wednesday marks the 10th anniversary of a deadly shooting at Lake Worth Middle School.

Surveillance cameras in a hallway at Lake Worth Middle caught the incident when a 7th grader, 13-year-old Nathaniel Brazill, shot and killed his teacher Barry Grunow. Brazill told police the May 26, 2000 shooting was an accident, and that he did not intend to kill Grunow. But a jury found him guilty. We interviewed him in prison one year ago.

He said, "I don't see myself as a killer. I understand what I've done and I understand what I've done was an awful thing. But it was not something that was part of my character, not something that was part of who I was as a person."

He continued saying, "I am a trustworthy individual. I believe that by looking at myself, looking at my life, looking at me personally, that you can find that this is an individual that we can take a second chance on."

Brazill, now 23-years-old, is serving a 28 year sentence and has reportedly applied this month to the state parole commission, seeking clemency, meaning he hopes to get his sentence reduced.

He's in a state prison in Okeechobee.

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