Less than justice
Toward the end of the court hearing yesterday, Dorothy Haskins threw out a challenge to one of the men who in 1994 took the life of her 9-year-old grandson, Jermaine Goffigan.
''You need to turn around to this mother and say you're sorry," she said to Bennie Santos, referring to her daughter sitting in the front row. ''That's the only way you're going to be able to get on with your life."
Santos, tough guy that he is, sat at the defense table and stared ahead in silence. Cold. Just like the act that brought him to this moment.
Nine years after Jermaine Goffigan was shot to death at Academy Homes and three years after Donnell Johnson was released from prison for a crime he didn't commit, justice, of a sort, was served. Santos, 25, and Michael Brown, 27, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter.
Finally, they stood in a courtroom and admitted what they had done.
Goffigan was an innocent victim, a casualty in the lurid war that then raged between gangs based in Bromley Heath and Academy Homes. In one of the most shocking murders ever in this city, Jermaine was killed on Halloween night, after returning to Academy Homes from trick-or-treating. Santos and Brown stood behind a fence and opened fire on a courtyard where several children and adults were playing. They said nothing when another man went to prison for a crime they knew he hadn't committed.
Like many homicides, their act has produced many victims besides the immediate one, including both the Goffigan family and Donnell Johnson's. Goffigan's murder also cast a long shadow across the city. Although it followed several years of gang violence, the murder stunned even the hardened.
It takes a certain mentality to commit such a heartless act, so it didn't come as a shock yesterday when Brown and Santos showed all the emotion of two guys waiting for an oil change. Judge Barbara
Their 10-year sentence is even lighter than it sounds. Indicted three years ago, they have both been in jail ever since -- Santos for a federal drug conviction and Brown because he was held without bail on the Goffigan charge -- meaning that their sentences will conclude in 2011.
It gets worse: Santos's sentence in the drug case will keep him behind bars until 2013, and Brown has a federal drug rap pending as well. So one, and possibly both of them, would have spent the next seven years in prison anyway.
The murder of a child should carry a much stiffer sentence. But prosecutors admitted that the case would have been tough to prove. They had already convicted someone else in the case, twice, which would have been awkward to explain to a jury in a new trial. Also, Johnson was convicted on mistaken eyewitness testimony, some of it offered by Goffigan's relatives. They might well have been called to testify for the defense in another trial, clearly an unacceptable option.
Deborah Haskins, Jermaine's mother, had to leave court during Brown's testimony to compose herself. Even from behind closed doors, in the room just off the courtroom where she was taken, her wails could be heard in the courtroom. When it was time for her to speak, her sister read her statement, which began, ''My heart is too broken to speak today."
After many years, an incredible amount of frustration, and a commendable amount of vigilance on the part of local law enforcement, Jermaine Goffigan's killers have finally been identified and punished. Chalk one up for persistence.
Still, a 9-year-old boy who might have been starting college in a few weeks is instead a beloved and painful memory, and nothing can change that.
Michael Brown and Bennie Santos finally face punishment. Yet it felt far shy of just.
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.
