Wilmington school death: Unforeseeable or planned attack?

Was it mutual angst between high school girls fueled by adrenaline which led to an "unforeseeable," deadly encounter at a Wilmington high school last year, as defense attorneys claim?

Or, was it a carefully-planned, one-sided attack, sparked by cell-phone messages, and carried out by aggressors with little regard for reasonable standards of decency and law, as the prosecution contends?

Delaware Family Court Judge Robert Coonin heard those opposing perspectives Tuesday during closing arguments for a case that will decide the fates of three girls whom prosecutors say are responsible for the death last year of Howard High School of Technology sophomore Amy Inita Joyner-Francis.

It was an attack, state prosecutor Sean Lugg stated emphatically after showing a 48-second video depicting the April 21 confrontation between Joyner-Francis and her classmate Trinity Carr, that occurred within the confines of the high school’s second-floor bathroom.

Joyner-Francis was attempting to explain the meaning of comments made during a group text conversation the previous day when Carr assaulted her unsuspectingly, Lugg said, kicking and punching Joyner-Francis as she fell to the floor.

“This was no fight. The evidence does not support the conclusion,” said Lugg, who insisted Joyner-Francis couldn’t have been preparing for violence because she had never dropped her purse, as shown in the video.

“Amy’s bag was left firmly rooted on her shoulder as Trinity Carr attacked her,” he said.

Defense attorneys argued the confrontation was mutual, and that no reasonable person could have predicted its deadly outcome. Typically, they said, students expect suspension or possibly expulsion after a fight.

Carr's attorney John Deckers pointed to another tense encounter between the two girls, which occurred the day before the deadly incident in the same bathroom, as evidence Joyner-Francis was a willing participant in the escalating situation. Witnesses last week said Joyner-Francis warned friends just prior to the first encounter that it could boil over into a fight and had asked them to come to her aid if that were to occur.

Violence only was prevented that day, Deckers said, because Michael Booth, a faculty monitor at the school, had heard noises of the verbal confrontation coming from the bathroom and intervened.

Prosecutors stated the April 20 argument prompted Carr, along with fellow students Chakiera Wright and Zion Snow, to carefully plan an "attack" on Joyner-Francis.

Carr, 17, is charged with criminally negligent homicide, a felony, and third-degree criminal conspiracy, a misdemeanor. Wright and Snow, also 17, are charged with third-degree criminal conspiracy.

During closing arguments on Tuesday, Wright and Snow's attorneys stated that insufficient evidence exists to prove a conspiracy by their clients. Text messages exchanged between the three the night before Joyner-Francis's death show no evidence of a fight being planned, they said.

“They’re talking about nails, they’re talking about GPAs,” said Kathryn Lunger, Snow's attorney. “Why would Zion get her nails done the evening before a fight?”

A deadly result, but foreseeable?

The state medical examiner, Dr. Adrienne Sekula-Perlman, last week said Joyner-Francis suffered sudden cardiac death brought on by a rare combination of heart and lung defects following the fight. Contributing factors included the emotional and physical stress brought on by the incident, which triggered a fight-or-flight response, she said.

It was a condition that doctors did detect prior to her death, and so no reasonable person could have predicted the outcome of the fight, Deckers said.  Therefore, a “take your victim as you find him” strict, legal analysis, which applies liability to a combatant no matter the victim's previous ailments, should not be applied in this case, he said.

“Trinity Carr had no clue, none, that death could result from a fight with Amy,” Deckers said. “Amy was walking through life with an irreversible, highly-dangerous heart defect.”

Expecting Carr to foresee Joyner-Francis’s death would hold the teen “to a standard that not even medical doctors are held,” he said.

The confrontation had grown to the severity illustrated on the video because of peer pressure, Deckers said. In the moments before the physical confrontation, a crowd of as many as 30 girls in the bathroom cheered the escalating argument.

“If peer pressure is a crime, then we should spend less time studying for the SAT and more time fingerprinting people in high school,” Deckers said.

Deckers further stated prosecutors had exaggerated their case and Perlman had “misrepresented” facts during her testimony when she stated Joyner-Francis suffered from broken fingernails during the attack, as "it was one, not plural."

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Ostensibly frustrated by Deckers’ lengthy, closing argument, Lugg objected multiple times, a rarity for that stage in a trial, by his own admission.

After Deckers finished, Lugg again stood and offered an addendum to his previous closing.

While Carr could not have known that Joyner-Francis had a deadly heart condition, she should have been aware that serious injury or death was a possible result of such a brutal confrontation – which he again stated “was not a fight” – because it occurred in the closed space of a bathroom, with hard tile and ceramic surfaces.

"Is it reasonable for a student to attack some person in a bathroom or some confined space?” Lugg asked.

Following the final statements from Lugg, Judge Coonin thanked the attorneys, “for the way you have conducted yourself.”

“I expect to be in a position to issue a ruling Thursday morning,” he said.

Contact Karl Baker at kbaker@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2329. Follow him on Twitter @kbaker6.