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Nathaniel Brazill Prosecutor Speaks Out

Aired July 27, 2001 - 12:16   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We want to go back to West Palm Beach now. We're listening to the prosecutor in the Nathaniel Brazill case commenting on the sentence just handed down by the judge.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

MARC SHINER, PROSECUTOR: Judge Wennet had a very tough decision to make. This was a hotly contested and debated case. You had a juvenile who was, a young boy who was charged with such a horrendous crime. The jury cut him a break and convicted him of second degree murder and Judge Wennet had a very hard decision. And knowing Judge Wennet the way I know him, for about 10 years, he did the best that he could. He took everything into consideration. He listened to everybody and he did what he thought was best. And we can only hope and pray that he made the right decision.

The lesson that I got out of this, and I told everybody this the first time, was you hope that everybody gets to know their kids better. Hopefully this won't happen to anybody else again.

There were warning signs there for Nathaniel Brazill. This young man was a troubled young man. He wasn't obviously troubled, but there was things that he did. There was a suicide letter. There was some lashing out at teachers. There were some things that he did that were clear warning signs that other children in our communities all around the country are doing. So hopefully parents and teachers will wake up, see these things, they'll intervene, search their children's rooms, get to know them better, hug them, love them.

This is a bad tragedy. Nobody wins in our community. This whole county, this whole state, this country, we all lost. This is a horrible, horrible case and hopefully we'll never see anything like this ever again.

QUESTION: Have you spoken to the Grunows (unintelligible) their reaction is?

SHINER: I have not spoken to the Grunow family. These people have suffered a tremendous loss from day one. Nothing this court system could have done would ever bring back Mr. Grunow. Mr. Grunow, from what I came to know, was a living legend. The man was a hero. And I'm not just saying that because the man's deceased. I've never been so impressed that people who knew a deceased person. This man basically was a walking legend. And he had affected thousands of people. And he's not really dead. He lives on in thousands of people that he's touched.

QUESTION: Are you concerned, in light of some of the testimony...

KAGAN: We've been listening to Marc Shiner. He was the prosecutor in the case against Nathaniel Brazill. Nathaniel Brazill is the 14-year-old who was convicted of killing his, the man he called his favorite teacher, Barry Grunow, last year. Now Nathaniel Brazill has been convicted of second degree murder and sentenced. Once again, you saw it live here on CNN. He will be serving a prison term of at least 28 years plus two years of house arrest and five years probation after that, what some might actually consider a light sentence given the family of Barry Grunow was pushing for Nathaniel Brazill to spend the rest of his life in prison.

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