One punch - Victim of a schoolyard brawl dies nine years later

WEST BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- Nearly nine years ago, Desmon Venn threw a single punch at a high school classmate and put him in a coma. Venn pleaded guilty to assault, spent two months in a boot camp and figured he had paid his debt to society.

Last month, though, a new bill arrived.

Prosecutors brought involuntary manslaughter charges against Venn after the victim finally died of his injuries without ever coming out of his coma.

Venn, now 26, could get up to 15 years behind bars in the death of Zuhair Pattah.

Double jeopardy -- or not

Venn's attorney, Elbert Hatchett, said the charges violate Venn's constitutional protection against double jeopardy, or being prosecuted twice for the same crime. He also said the state's six-year window for filing an upgraded charge after such a crime has long since slammed shut.

"When they elected to prosecute him then, they forfeited the right to prosecute him thereafter for the same behavior," Hatchett said.

John Skrzynski, an assistant Oakland County prosecutor who has handled the case from the beginning, said there is no double jeopardy because Pattah's death generated a new crime, which also rules out any statute-of-limitations argument.

But Skrzynski, who successfully prosecuted assisted-suicide proponent Dr. Jack Kevorkian for murder in 1999, said: "This is not an easy case. It's a very difficult case. It's a very sad case."

Pattah was 16 and Venn 17 when Venn punched him between the eyes during a melee in the parking lot of West Bloomfield High in 1994. Pattah fell backward, hitting his head on the pavement with such force that his brain stem was severed.

Element of manslaughter

In 1995, Venn pleaded guilty to misdemeanor aggravated assault. In addition to serving time in boot camp, he received two years of probation and was fined $1,000.

On Jan. 8, however, Pattah died at age 25 of what the medical examiner listed as complications from the head injury. Venn, now a restaurant worker in the Atlanta area, turned himself in after learning of the new charge. He was jailed on $250,000 bail.

Venn's attorney said he never warned his client about the possibility of new charges. "I always felt that once the original case had been adjudicated, it was not at all likely that they could bring a viable charge against him again," Hatchett said.

Stephen J. Schulhofer, a law professor at New York University, said that such cases have occurred from time to time in other states, and that the federal courts have repeatedly ruled that the homicide charges do not constitute double jeopardy.

He said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that double jeopardy exists only if the two crimes have the same elements. And in this case, death is an element of the manslaughter charge but not the assault charge.

Venn feels bad about what happened to Pattah and prays every night for his victim and his family, according to his lawyer, who would not allow a jailhouse interview with Venn.

"It's been a haunting experience for him that he'll never get over no matter what happens in the courts," Hatchett said, "and it has had a significant impact on his life."