Tomorrow, Morley - who glorified the killing in lurid
letters to her teenage accomplices - is to be sentenced to 17 1/2 to
35 years in prison for the May 30, 2003, slaying of 16-year-old Jason
Sweeney. She is 17 now, and is one of the youngest girls to ever plead
guilty to murder in Philadelphia. Her companions got life in the trial
that ended March 9.
The brutality and motive for the murder have been
well-established, but the question at the heart of the case remains
unanswered: What turned Justina Morley into, in her
words, "a cold-blooded [expletive] death-worshiping bitch?"
Though some studies have found a genetic component to
criminality, area psychiatrists asked to comment on the case do not
believe that a teenager such as Morley is simply a "bad seed."
"I don't think it's possible for a child to be this awful without
having learned to be awful someplace," said Paul Fink, a psychiatrist
who chairs Philadelphia's Youth Homicide Committee and consults with
city schools on violence prevention.
Nothing in court records, however, indicates that Morley
was abused or neglected as a child. And in her three days of court
testimony and cross-examination, Morley herself offered little
in the way of explanation for her actions.
She admitted that she began smoking marijuana at age 10, and
moved on to taking prescription pills, snorting heroin, and smoking
marijuana laced with embalming fluid.
The teens, she said, wanted to rob and kill Sweeney in order to
buy drugs, and she said she went along with the deadly plan "to be
cool." As she watched, her three friends beat Sweeney to death with a
hatchet, a hammer and rocks. For that, Domenic Coia, 19, his brother
Nicholas Coia, 18, and Edward Batzig Jr., 18, will be sentenced in May
to life without parole.
"I am guilty. But I still don't feel guilty for anything. I'll
always be guilty, and I don't care. I still enjoy my flashbacks. They
give me comfort. I love them," Morley later wrote Domenic Coia
in a jailhouse letter.
In testimony, she said her violent and sexually explicit letters
contained what she thought the Coias and Batzig wanted to hear.
"I was looking for acceptance," she weakly explained during
questioning. ". . . I didn't believe anybody liked me."
Her mother, April Frederick, testified at a 2003 hearing that
Morley had been a "bubbly" child, growing up in a Fishtown
household as the second-youngest of six siblings. The girl had nearly
no contact with her father, Frederick testified.
"My kids got home from school before I got home from work. That's
the way it was. There were rules to follow," Frederick said.
At a hearing in 2003, psychiatrist William Russell,
who was hired by the defense in an attempt to have Morley tried
as a juvenile, testified that she began cutting herself when she was
10.
"It seems to be tied to depression. . . . It appears to be a
self-release form of behavior," he said.
Morley's mother noticed a change in her behavior when she was about 11:
"She was more reserved. She didn't interact," Frederick said. "I
really attributed it to an awkward stage that young women go through."
Later, Morley's friends told her mother that the girl was
cutting herself and hiding the wounds under long sleeves. She was
hospitalized in April 2002 for threatening suicide and
self-mutilation, court records show.
Three days later, she was admitted to Friends Hospital for taking
pills, making shallow cuts to her wrists, knees, calf and thigh, and
for posting on her bedroom door a poem she wrote about killing
herself. Court records indicate that Morley told her mother she
would commit suicide if she were not released. Against the advice of
doctors, her mother then took her out of the hospital.
Morley was also hospitalized at St. Christopher's for trying to
overdose on prescription pills.
Russell said Morley had "an extreme history of mental
health problems. . . . You have a young lady with an unstable sense of
who she is."
Court records show that before her arrest, Morley also had
problems in school. She was expelled from eighth grade at Adaire
Elementary when officials investigating the theft of money discovered
that she had two penknives in her purse. She was forced to repeat the
year at Holy Name of Jesus Catholic school, which she attended until
her June 2003 arrest.
Russell said that Morley suffered from low self-esteem and
that her "early" sexual activity was "an attempt at validation of
worth."
Several days before the murder, she testified that she agreed to
have sex with both Batzig and Nicholas Coia in exchange for heroin.
"She appears lost and vacant," Russell testified. "She
certainly was a person who was easily led. . . . This is a young lady
who is basically willing to go along to get along."
Several psychiatrists not connected with the case wondered what
role drugs and group dynamics played in the murder.
"People who otherwise would not do horrible things will do them
in drug-related situations," said Gail Edelsohn, director of child and
adolescent psychiatry at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.
Morley testified that she repeatedly stole money from her mother and
her siblings to purchase drugs.
Other psychiatrists said Morley's behavior is consistent
with borderline personality disorder, though some psychiatrists are
reluctant to diagnose personality disorders in one so young.
Christos Ballas, a forensic psychiatrist who teaches at the
University of Pennsylvania, said borderlines are easily influenced.
Depression may have been a factor in Morley's role in the
murder. Though depression is commonly thought of as an illness that
makes people lethargic, a growing body of research points to it as a
significant cause of violence, said William R. Dubin, a
psychiatrist who is chief medical officer at Temple University
Hospital-Episcopal Campus.
Russell, the defense psychiatrist, concluded that Morley's
"mental health issues, her substance abuse, her immaturity reflect an
individual who is in high need of intensive psychiatric, psychologic
treatment."
At tomorrow's hearing, Morley will have an opportunity to
address Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner before he hands down
the sentence.
She could also take that opportunity to apologize to the Sweeney
family.
Her lawyer, William J. Brennan, says she is remorseful.
"If there is any way she could go back in time and change things,
she would," he said. "Hopefully she'll get help while she's away."
