Word: pierson
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...Pierson is one of the 300 or so children each year across the U.S. who murder one or both of their parents. Fathers are most often the victims. In recent years the frequency of such crimes, which account for just under 2% of all U.S. homicides, has remained stable, but the legal tactics used to defend the youthful killers have changed. More and more children are arguing that they acted in self-defense, admitting readily to the crime but pointing to years of abuse that left them fearful for their lives. As awareness of child abuse has increased, experts maintain...
High School Cheerleader Cheryl Pierson had often fantasized about having her father killed. Her resentment and rage came to a head one day in November 1985 when Pierson and Classmate Sean Pica, both then 16, were sitting in homeroom at Newfield High School in Selden, N.Y., discussing an article in a local paper about an abused wife who enlisted someone to murder her husband. Pierson wondered aloud who would be crazy enough to undertake such a deadly commission. Pica promptly said he would volunteer -- if the price was right. Three months later, as James Pierson, a 42-year-old electrician...
Both Pica and Pierson pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Pica was sentenced in April to eight to 24 years in prison. But Pierson argued that years of sexual abuse had pushed her over the brink. Last week, a judge sentenced her to six months in jail and five years' probation. "This is not a place I want to be in, but nothing could compare to what I went through," she said last week at , the Suffolk County Correctional Facility. "I just couldn't see any other...
Their lawyers face a formidable task: justifiable homicide is difficult to prove. Defense attorneys must first convince juries that severe abuse took place, then demonstrate why the defendants felt they had no other options. Pierson, a quiet and somewhat immature teenager, says her 240-lb. father began sexually abusing her when she was about eleven, progressing until he was having sexual intercourse with her as often as three times a day. She claimed that he even molested her in the car on the way to the hospital to visit her mother, who died in 1985. "It was awful," she says...
Despite her anguish, Pierson never once sought help from any adult. Prosecutor Edward Jablonski and others are worried that sentences as lenient as Pierson's might prompt other abused children to seek revenge. More frightening is the possibility that some unbalanced children may use alleged abuse as a pretext for killing their parents. Says Judge Vincent J. Femia of Upper Marlboro, Md., who has handled several parricide cases: "In effect, the defendant can argue that he did something that should have been done for the community...