Life Term for robbery – Cruel and Unusual for Ian Manuel? | Chocolate City: The Best African American Blog

Life Term for robbery – Cruel and Unusual for Ian Manuel?

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Ian Manuel - sentenced to die in prison for an offense in a robbery and non-homicidal case

In 1990, when Ian Manuel was 13, gang members instructed him to commit a robbery. During the botched robbery attempt in downtown Tampa, Florida, Ian shot and wounded a woman. He turned himself in to the police. Ian’s attorney told him to plead guilty in exchange for a 15-year prison sentence. Ian accepted responsibility and pleaded guilty but was sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. His lawyer never appealed or withdrew the plea. Ian was sent to prison, where he was so small no prison uniform fit him. He has spent years in solitary confinement and repeatedly attempted suicide. The victim has forgiven Ian and petitioned for his release but he remains condemned to die in a Florida prison. Now 30, Ian remains condemned to die in a Florida prison.

Ian Manuel is one of only two 13-year-olds in the United States of America to be sentenced to die in prison for an offense in a non-homicidal case. Both boys are African-American. The other is Joe Sullivan, who is in prison for a 1989 robbery and raping a 72-year-old white woman.

The victim, beautiful Debbie Baigrie was shot in the face on the night of July 27, 1990. Her face had a bullet hole in it. Four days later, the attacker, 13-year-old Ian Manuel was arrested. Today, Baigrie, 39, has to point to the wound on her lower left cheek for it to be noticed. As Baigrie endured painful reconstructive surgery to rebuild her gums and teeth obliterated in the shooting, she decided to rebuild herself in other ways.

She became a competitive bodybuilder, Ms. Tampa 1992 and the American Natural Bodybuilding Council person of the year in 1995. She also built a bridge to an unlikely person: Ian Manuel.

Not long after he was sentenced to life without parole, Manuel began writing Baigrie. Shocked at first, she eventually wrote him back, and forgave him. "My heart went out to him," Baigrie said. "He was a child. He had a bum rap from the time he was born."

Their correspondence eventually stopped. "Everybody told me he’s a sociopath," she said. "And I had to come to that realization on my own."

Now Baigrie publishes the free monthly Natural Muscle Magazine, is married to Steve, a vice president at a flight simulator company, and is full-time mom to her daughters Dana 14, and Laura, 12. In 1998, her daughter, Dana was diagnosed with histiocytosis, a rare blood disease. Baigrie says her daughter is the reason her life was spared: "She needed me."

Sound Off – Does the punishment fit the crime?

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