Lionel Tate Deemed Competent

Convicted child killer Lionel Tate is competent to face a hearing that could send him back to prison, a judge ruled Monday after experts testified the teen faked mental illness.

Tate's lawyer said he didn't write his purported suicide threat.

Broward County Circuit Judge Joel T. Lazarus set a Feb. 27 hearing for Tate, who is accused of violating probation by robbing a pizza delivery man at gunpoint. Lazarus could send him back to prison, possibly even for life, if he finds Tate violated his probation.

Tate, 18, is on probation for the 1999 killing of a 6-year-old girl whom his mother was caring for. He was once the youngest person in modern U.S. history sentenced to life behind bars.

Tate's lawyers said at Monday's competency hearing that Tate did not actually write a letter to Lazarus claiming he was "hearing voices" and had considered suicide. The letter, which prompted the postponement of a probation hearing for Tate earlier this month, was actually written by an older jail inmate and signed by Tate.

"It was a desperate attempt by a young man who was being manipulated, " said H. Dohn Williams, an assistant public defender.

Two psychologists who examined Tate said he appeared to be feigning mental symptoms and claimed not to have an understanding of basic legal terms such as the difference between guilty and not guilty. At one point, Tate even claimed not to remember his mother's first name.

Psychologist Trudy Block-Garfield said Tate pretended to have hallucinations and frequently fluttered his hands near his ears as if hearing voices. She said his actions were "totally inconsistent" with actual psychosis.

"Aside from the demonstrations designed to make me believe he was psychotic, he was a perfect gentleman," Block-Garfield said.

Williams withdrew from the case Monday and was replaced by lawyer Ellis Rubin, who was hired by Tate's family.

Tate was 12 when he killed Tiffany Eunick, a family friend, in 1999. His lawyers initially claimed the girl died accidentally while the 160-pound boy was imitating wrestling moves he had seen on television, but experts said the girl died of a beating that lasted up to five minutes.

At age 13, he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life, and the case stirred debate over Florida's tough stand against juvenile crime. In 2004, an appeals court threw out the conviction after finding that it was not clear whether Tate understood what was happening to him.

He then pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was released from prison on 10 years' probation.

Florida and dozens of other states have laws permitting courts to try children accused of serious crimes as adults.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reported in October that at least 2,225 people are serving life sentences without parole in U.S. prisons for crimes they committed under age 18. Six of them were 13 at the time of the crime; none was 12 as Tate was.

"We don't seem capable of recognizing that our traditional approach to crime and justice often fails with adolescents," said Jeffrey A. Butts, a research fellow at the University of Chicago's Chapin Hall Center for Children. "Prison by itself doesn't do a lot to change behavior or improve someone's chances of success."