After implicating Joe, McCants was sentenced as an adult to four-and-one-half years and served just six months. The prosecution relied primar- ily on the self-serving stories of McCants and Gulley, including Gulley’s claim that Joe had confessed the rape to him in a detention facility before trial. Florida is one of a few states that allows the prosecutor to decide to charge a child in adult court for certain crimes and has no minimum age for trying a child as an adult.Īt trial, Joe testified that he had participated in the earlier burglary but had not committed sexual battery. There was no review of whether Joe should be tried in juvenile or adult court. The prosecutor chose to indict thirteen-year-old Joe Sullivan in adult court for sexual battery and other charges. Joe admitted helping the older boys with the burglary earlier in the day but adamantly denied any knowledge of or involvement in the sexual assault. Joe was not apprehended that day, but he voluntarily turned him- self in the next day after learning that Gulley and McCants had implicated him. Facing serious felony charges, Gulley-who had an extensive criminal history involving at least one sexual offense-accused Joe of the sexual battery. Within minutes of the assault, Gulley and McCants were apprehended together. She could describe him only as “quite a dark colored boy” with “curly type hair.” Gulley, McCants, and Sullivan are all African American. Bruner never even saw her attacker clearly. Someone knocked on her door, and as she went to open it, another person who had entered through the back of her home grabbed her from behind. Bruner, an older white woman in her early seventies, was sexually assaulted in her home. The three boys entered the home of Lena Bruner in the morning, while no one was there. On the morning of May 4, 1989, Michael Gulley, fifteen, and Nathan McCants, seventeen, convinced thirteen-year-old Joe Sullivan to accompany them when they broke into an empty house in Pensacola, Florida.
Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate “Bryan Stevenson is America’s young Nelson Mandela - a brilliant lawyer fighting with courage and conviction to guarantee justice for all.” “Not since Atticus Finch has a fearless and committed lawyer made such a difference in the American South.” Stevenson will be speaking at Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures on Monday, January 25th. Littsburgh is thrilled to be able to share with you this chapter from Bryan Stevenson’s best-selling, award-winning book Just Mercy, “a powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice-from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time.”
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