By: Nic Corbett
This appeared in tallahassee.com, see full story
Tianna Brown was 14 when she and a then-17-year-old friend rented a room at the Dutch Inn on Apalachee Parkway with two men and then robbed them, prosecutors say.
Brown, now 16, was sentenced Tuesday by Leon Circuit Judge Angela Dempsey to seven years in prison and three years of probation, with credit for the two years she’s spent in mostly solitary confinement at the Wakulla County Jail. Dempsey recommended she be kept in a youthful-offender facility after her co-defendant, Luconda Stevens, is tried.
Prosecutors say it was Stevens, now 20, who planned the Feb. 11, 2007, robbery and then shot at the men with her handgun. One of the men was permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Stevens is set to be tried April 20 on a charge of armed robbery and two counts of attempted first-degree murder.
As for Brown, Assistant State Attorney Kathy Ray said: “There were things she could have done other than go along with it.”
Brown pleaded no contest to the same charges as Stevens in exchange for an agreement from prosecutors not to seek a prison sentence longer than 10 years.
She was not isolated in jail as a form of punishment, but as a matter of circumstance; Brown was charged as an adult but kept from the general population since she’s a juvenile, said her attorney, Greg Cummings. She was also separated from Stevens.
