DefendChristian fernandez

Cristian Fernandez is a 12 year old child from Jacksonville, FL. He is being charged, as an adult, for the death of his 2 year old half-brother, David Galarriago. If convicted of the first degree murder charge, he will become the youngest person ever to receive life in prison.

"In a case of this magnitude where the facts are absolutely provable as first-degree murder, then the only way that we can trust that we can fashion any kind of a sentence that both protects the public and at some point tries to help someone who is 12 years old and commits a first-degree murder is to put it in the adult system and work from there,"

This is according to State Attorney Angela Corey, though it is unclear how she means that keeping a 12-year-old child who is afraid of the dark in a room with no windows, in sollitary confinement 23 hours a day, in anyway would "help" anything but her own career.

The mother of one of his school mates has visited him there. She says that he's no threat to society, he didn't make trouble, or start fights in school. He's just a child in need of help and rehabilitation.
Somebody should give this woman a million dollars for behaving as a sensable human being and, for showing compassion where few americans have any.

Cristian has had a difficult life. His mother, Biannela Susana, had him when she was only 12. Cristian's father has never been around, partly because he went to prison on sexual assault charges after impregnating Cristian's mother.

Cristian and his young mother, went to foster care together when he was 2 and she was 14. According to his public defender, authorities had found 2 year old Cristian walking around dirty and naked outside a Florida motel while his grandmother, nursed a drug habit inside.

Physical and sexual abuse are well-documented in Cristian's short life. In addition to the pattern of abuse and negligent, to which he has become accustom, last October his stepfather shot and killed himself in front of the family to avoid arrest on child abuse charges.

I have to ask you,If Christian caused the head trauma that was the sad cause of his brothers death, where could he have learned to express anger in any other way and, did he really intend to kill?

According to Robert Batey, professor of criminal law at Stetson University College of Law, "Especially if it's a beating death, you could argue that the child did not have the intent to kill, which would be necessary even for second-degree murder, or that the child was not capable of the cool thinking beforehand that's implied by the notion of premeditation."

Christian's mother is charged with aggravated manslaughter by culpable negligence and is scheduled to go to trial in September. The warrant for her arrest says Susana came home to find the 2-year-old unresponsive but did not call 911. Rather, she put ice on his head, turned to websites for information about concussions and waited hours for the boy to wake up, but he never did. Perhaps if she had taken him straight to the ER, He'd be alive today.

Police say she initially told investigators that David Galarriago was hurt in a fall at the family's Southside apartment.

Since Cristian's arrest, he has been examined by two forensic psychologists who found him to be emotionally underdeveloped but essentially reformable, despite a tough life.

He is a child. He has the mind of a child. He should be tried as a child. Tell Florida, children are NOT adults. This child should not be thrown away in an adult prison. He can be saved. He can be reformed. He should have the opportunity to become a responsible adult, because he IS NOT one now.

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