Every police officer is taller than him. As are all of the other criminal defendants. The judge, as well. This defendant is the youngest person to ever be charged as an adult with murder in Jacksonville, Florida.
He is 12 years old. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. His name is Cristian Fernandez.
"Yes, I have compassion for Cristian Fernandez, but it's not my job to forgive," said Florida State Attorney Angela Corey. "It's my job to follow the law."
Police believe Cristian, who has relatives in the Dominican Republic, used premeditation and intentionally killed his brother David by violently shoving the two-year-old into a bookshelf, twice, causing a skull fracture and massive internal bleeding.
The medical examiner ruled David's cause of death as homicide, by blunt force trauma. The mother of both children, 25-year-old Bianela Susana, is also in jail, unable to post her $1 million bond. She's charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child and felony child abuse and, if convicted, she faces 30 years in prison.
Allegedly, Cristian has confessed.
But on his behalf, there is international outrage. More than 170,000 people have signed an online petition, urging the prosecutor to treat the boy as a juvenile, not as an adult. The prosecutor disagreed, saying Florida law is Florida law.
The Sunshine State sends more juveniles into the adult prison population than any other state. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2009, 393 Florida juveniles entered adult prison, followed by Connecticut with 332, North Carolina with 215, New York with 190, Arizona with 157 and Texas with 156.
"He's just a kid," said Alicia Torres. Her son was a classmate of Cristian. She signed the petition, too.
"He's a child. He's got a baby face," she said. "He doesn't know - he doesn't know what's going on."
Complicating the Fernandez case is the role of the mother, Susana. Police say during the several-hour window between when David was injured and she drove him to the hospital, her laptop shows that she searched what to do about an unconscious boy, checked her bank and downloaded music, before finally taking David to the hospital.
A doctor at St Luke's told a police officer that had David been treated sooner, he may have survived.
Cristian's public defenders believe all of the blame belongs with the mother. She goes on trial on February 27, 2012.
The boy will next be in court October 31. His trial date has not yet been set.
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