A 17-year-old Delaware girl has been sentenced to a mere six months in a juvenile facility for participating in an attack on a student in a high school girl’s bathroom that resulted in the victim’s death, court papers reveal.
Student Amy Joyner-Francis, 16, was found beaten to death in the bathroom of Howard High School of Technology in Wilmington, Delaware, on April 21. A hospital spokesman said that the victim had a previously undisclosed heart condition that contributed to her death.
Police arrested a student and accused her of repeatedly hitting Joyner-Francis in the head and torso, causing her death. She was charged with criminally negligent homicide. During the recent prosecution of the case, the state revealed that the shocking incident was recorded on cell phone video by a second assailant.
On Monday, the attacker seen in the video repeatedly punching the victim was convicted of negligent homicide by a Wilmington Family Court judge.
The girl, whose name has not been released due to her age, was sentenced to a six-month stint in a juvenile facility, according to Fox News.
The girl’s attorney argued that she can’t be convicted of murder because the fight was “consensual” and that no one went into the altercation with the intention of murder.
“The altercation was between two teens who knowingly and willingly entered the bathroom for that purpose,” attorney John Deckers insisted. “The possible consequence — that a consensual fight, involving no blunt force injuries, could ever result in death due to an unknown, pre-existing medical condition — was entirely unapparent to either girl.”
“A teenager has no way of reasonably perceiving or anticipating that death might occur in this type of a consensual confrontation — something which otherwise appeared to be a not uncommon, although ugly and regrettable, fight between two school girls,” Deckers concluded.
A second defendant, 17, received 18 months of probation after being convicted of conspiracy for helping plan the assault. A third teen girl was acquitted of all charges.
The fight was reportedly over a boyfriend.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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