14-Year-Old Sentenced Under Plea Agreement

By Amy Brouillette, 5-25-05

A bitter mix of justice and compassion was meted out in Boulder District Court yesterday, as a judge approved a plea agreement in the case of a Boulder teenager charged with homicide in the shooting death of her father. Dressed in a black T-shirt and sweatpants, and bound by shackles, the tiny 14-year-old defendant (whose name New West is not publishing because she is a juvenile) appeared for arraignment in juvenile court Wednesday morning, where prosecutors dropped the second-degree murder charge in exchange for a guilty plea to manslaughter and first-degree assault.

In March, the girl was charged with manslaughter after police found her father, Garrett Rich, dead of two gun shot wounds in their east Boulder home. She told police shot her father to end his suffering from a botched suicide attempt. In April, prosecutors upped the charge to homocide. Under the plea agreement yesterday, the girl was sentenced to two years at a youth correctional facility for manslaughter and five years probation for first-degree assault. She was also credited 73 days for time served.

Flanked by her lawyers and her mother, Mary Dolson, the young, 110-lb. defendant stood before the podium, her head hung and eyes cast to the floor as prosecutor Deputy District Attorney Colette Cribari read the factual basis for the plea agreement.

Here’s the story: The girl and her father, whom she had chosen to live with following her parent’s divorce in 2003, had moved with to Florida in September 2004, where they lived as transients out of their truck. Early this year, they returned to Boulder. The father, plagued by financial woes and severe depression, had meanwhile been preparing for his suicide for months, discussing at length the details with his daughter — even transferring his property and assets into her name, and making her swear to “finish him off� in the event a single shot failed to kill him so he wouldn’t “end up like Terri Shiavo,� Cribari told the court yesterday.

On Sunday, March 13, Rich told his daughter to go outside and sit in his pickup truck. A while later the girl said she spotted her father at a window motioning for her to come inside. Thinking he’d abandoned his plan, the defendant said she went back inside and sat down with her father in front of the television to watch Arena football. While the two chatted about how fun the game looked to play, her father pulled out a .38-caliber pistol and shot himself in the head. For 15 minutes she said she held her father’s hand as he gasped and writhed on the floor. True to her promise, she picked up the gun and shot him in the chest. She hid in a closet until she heard him take his final breath (even the second shot failed to bring him instant death), and then called police. When police arrived at the Rich home in east Boulder they found the 14-year-old girl in the back of her dad’s pickup truck. In her backpack was a last will and testament from her father transferring his property and assets into her name, and $13,000 in cash.

Garrett Rich was reportedly a heavy drinker with an explosive temper, and the only person mourning Rich’s death, according to public defender Michael Rafik, is his daughter. “He was her whole world,� Rafik said during a passionate statement to the court today on his client’s behalf. “[She] could no longer listen to her father’s body trying to die.� He described the defendant as an intelligent, thoughful girl who writes poetry and makes origami, a “wonderful little girl� who has displayed remarkable strength in enduring a situation no child ever should.

“No one knows what they would do in that situation,� Rafik said. “[The defendant] did what she thought was fair and just…and what her father wanted her to do.� Boulder prosecutors, at least in back in April, thought the girl should have called police after her father's botched suicide. Instead, she told police she shot him to "put him out of his misery." For this, she will spend the next two years in juvenile jail. While the plea deal represents a win for the defense (sort of), and for more compassionate juvenile justice over the iron-fisted charge of homicide, the legal outcome seems trivial compared to the psychological wreckage this young girl now faces. [End of article]