LENIENT SENTENCE IN TOT'S SLAYING
Denny Walsh
The Sacramento Bee
The federal judge who sentenced Fairfield housewife Sharonda Renita White last week called her crime a "horrible homicide," but he was part of a consensus that she was in the grip of a terrible mental disease at the time.
Given the unusual nature of the case, the prosecutor agreed to leniency and U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. imposed a prison term of five years, seven months.
White, 24, is the only person ever to be convicted under an obscure federal law that makes it a crime in this country to kill a U.S. national in a foreign country.
In a guilty plea, she admitted using a slotted metal serving spoon to beat to death her 2-year-old half brother, Crosby Justin White, who was also her adopted son. The incident took place in 1996 at White's home in Okinawa, Japan, where her U.S. airman husband was stationed.
Japanese authorities declined to prosecute when she was diagnosed as schizophrenic.
Upon White's return to this country, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jodi Rafkin successfully sought an indictment under a law that had never before been used. She did so, Rafkin explained at Friday's sentencing hearing, because White was providing day care for five children at the time of the incident and, without a conviction, there would be nothing to prevent her from continuing to do the same type of work in this country.
"She committed a horrible homicide by beating her helpless child, causing him to endure what appears to have been a painful death," Burrell said Friday as he weighed the pros and cons of the unprecedented matter before him.
On the other hand, the judge noted, "Her ruthless, volitional thinking as she battered her child appears to have derived from a serious mental illness.
"Psychiatrists have said that, when she is on psychotropic medication and free from illicit drugs and alcohol, she is not a danger."
Assistant Federal Defender Mary French assured the judge that her client "has been very motivated to continue treatment and various doctors have noted her own insight into her illness. She knows she will have to take medicine for the rest of her life."
White's schizophrenia was not diagnosed prior to the incident.
Her model behavior since being incarcerated two years ago "is more indicative of the Sharonda I've known for a lifetime," her uncle, Melvin O'Neil, told Burrell at the sentencing hearing.
"This is not misplaced family loyalty," O'Neil insisted. "If I thought that she is not on the road to being a decent member of society, I would want to protect my family from her. Very few people have known the pain our family has gone through, and I hope they never do. But, the proper corrective action is treatment. Beyond that, it really serves no purpose to punish her."
Before a courtroom packed with her relatives, a teary-eyed White told Burrell: "I want to apologize to my husband and the rest of my family for the pain I've caused.
"Not a day goes by that I don't think about what's happened and not a night goes by that I don't have a nightmare about it.
"I loved Crosby with all my heart. I wish I could go back and do it all differently."
The judge cited declarations from Sacramento County sheriff's deputies as to White's exemplary conduct at the downtown jail. He also referenced a declaration from an Elk Grove teacher who helped White finish her high school education while in jail. The teacher told of White's desire to improve.
"Deterrence seemingly has already occurred in this case," said Burrell. "The defendant does not appear to need prolonged confinement where she can come to understand the mores of society."
Rafkin and French agreed on a sentencing range of 57 to 71 months, but the prosecutor wanted the maximum and the defense lawyer the minimum.
Rafkin argued that White had been given "a substantial break already" by virtue of the government's post-indictment willingness to treat the case as voluntary manslaughter rather than second-degree murder.
That compromise, Rafkin said, was driven by White's family history of mental illness and the fact that "no amount of time will bring Crosby White back and the worth of his life cannot be equaled by anything we do today."
In a previously-filed sentencing memorandum, Rafkin also pointed out that a 6-year-old boy in White's care who witnessed the beating "will not have to be retraumatized by having to recount in a public courtroom what he saw and heard."
The prosecutor told Burrell on Friday that the 6-year-old was so affected that, in an interview, he recalled Crosby sounded like "an animal squealing in a corner."
Burrell said the ghastly nature of the crime steered him away from 57 months, but White's efforts to rehabilitate herself caused him to stop short of the 71 months.