CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. — A former teacher convicted of murdering two children now knows his punishment.
Michael White, a former fifth-grade teacher at Toney Elementary School in DeKalb County, was convicted of the 2016 murders of 11-year-old Tatiyana Coates and her brother, 15-year-old Daveon Coates.
On Wednesday, Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Mark Winne was in the Clayton County courtroom as Judge Aaron Mason handed White two life sentences without parole. He was also sentenced to another 20 years for home invasion and a $202,020.20 fine.
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Judge Mason said that the fine was in recognition of White’s affiliation with the Rollin’ 20s Crips street gang’s obsession with the number 20.
“Two children, ages 11 and 15, who were asleep in the wee hours of the night in their home when a group of armed individuals forced their way in the middle of the night into their house. Now you were present with that group," Judge Mason said during the sentencing hearing.
“The gravity of this case is not lost on me,” the judge said.
Clayton County Deputy Chief Assistant District Attorney La’Carrian Blount says that White was the last of four defendants to stand trial.
“They were innocent and yet you’re still here, alive and well,” Assistant District Attorney Sheila Francois read from a statement from the children’s mother. “My heart has been broken for nine years, four months, since my children took their last breath. I died with them and was buried in their casket also.”
Blount says it remains a mystery why White, a teacher who went to college on a football scholarship with no criminal record, chose to join a gang and contributed to the children’s deaths.
She says that evidence suggests he was not the one who pulled the trigger.
Defense attorney Bruce Harvey’s statement had a Biblical theme, focusing on mercy.
“Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone,” Harvey said. “Mercy is not just an admirable quality of our society.”
He says that White maintains his innocence and will be filing a motion for a new trial and appeal.
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