Morley's descent began at tender age
Drugs and self-mutilation by age 10, a participant in a ghastly murder at age 15. By Jacqueline Soteropoulos and Stacey Burling INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
On the witness stand, she looked like little more than a wan teen, straight brown hair hanging past a small silver cross that dangled from her necklace. But at the trial that riveted the region, Justina Morley told a tale - and of her role in it - of unfathomable viciousness: how at age 15 she led a boy to his execution in an overgrown lot. She promised him sex. Instead, her three male pals - one of them his best friend - beat him beyond recognition.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. 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. Russell said Morley had "an extreme history of mental health problems...You have a young lady with an unstabel 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 self 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. 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 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."
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