Insanity defense planned for Palmetto Bay teen in school killing

MIAMI - An attorney for a 14-year-old boy charged with fatally slashing a classmate in a school restroom told a judge for the first time Tuesday that he will pursue an insanity defense.

Defense attorney Richard Rosenbaum said eighth grader Michael Hernandez is mentally ill and mentally incompetent to help with his defense on charges that he killed 14-year-old Jaime Gough and plotted the killing of a 13-year-old classmate at Southwood Middle School.

The hearing was scheduled to take Hernandez's innocent plea on the attempted murder charge filed six months after Gough was killed Feb. 3. Hernandez had blood on his clothes and a bloody knife in his backpack when he was arrested in class after the Palmetto Bay school was locked down.

A journal in the backpack outlined plans to kill Gough and the other boy identified in court records as A.M. at the same time in the same restroom Feb. 2.

The intended victim told police that he refused to enter the handicapped stall when Michael said he wanted to show him something. Gough's body was found in the same stall the next day.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Henry Leyte-Vidal delayed deciding whether the murder and attempted murder charges should be combined for a single trial but noted the plot against A.M. would become evidence in the murder trial.

"There is going to be an insanity defense," Rosenbaum said as he renewed a request for public funds for the defense. Hernandez's parents testified about their shrinking assets as their blank-faced son looked dead ahead rather than at them.

The judge delayed a decision on subsidizing the defense and set the next hearing for progress reports on the psychological evaluations of Michael's mental competency for Sept 21.

The teenager faces an automatic life prison sentence if convicted by a jury of first-degree murder.