Joe Sullivan and Michael Gulley

Joe Sullivan and Michael Gulley were linked by a burglary and a sexual-assault prosecution in which Gulley accused thirteen-year-old Sullivan of a rape Sullivan denied committing. Their relationship was sharply unequal: the boys had entered a house together earlier that day, but after the assault Gulley implicated Sullivan, and the state pursued Sullivan in adult court while Gulley was dealt with as a juvenile.

The burglary and the assault

On the morning of May 4, 1989, fifteen-year-old Gulley and seventeen-year-old Nathan McCants persuaded thirteen-year-old Sullivan to accompany them into an empty house in Pensacola, Florida. The home belonged to Lena Bruner, who was away. McCants took money and jewelry, and the three boys left. That afternoon, Bruner was sexually assaulted in her home. She described her attacker only as a dark-skinned boy with curly hair; she could not clearly see him.

Within minutes of the assault, Gulley and McCants were apprehended together, and McCants had Bruner’s jewelry. Sullivan was not apprehended that day. After learning the next day that the other boys had implicated him, he voluntarily turned himself in. He acknowledged participating in the earlier burglary but firmly denied knowing about or taking part in the sexual assault.

Gulley’s accusation and the evidence

Facing serious felony charges, Gulley accused Sullivan of the sexual battery. The prosecution later relied on Gulley’s account that Sullivan had confessed to the rape in a detention facility before trial. Gulley had an extensive criminal history, including at least one prior sexual offense; the book characterizes his account as self-serving. These circumstances make the accusation consequential, but do not by themselves establish whether it was true.

The physical evidence did not independently establish that Sullivan committed the assault. The state presented a latent partial palm-print match, consistent with Sullivan’s admitted presence in the bedroom during the earlier burglary. Police had collected seminal fluid and blood but did not present the material in court, and it was destroyed before the defense could test it. An officer also identified Sullivan as a youth seen fleeing the house, but had observed Sullivan at the police station as the suspect before making the identification. Bruner, despite rehearsal of her testimony outside the jury’s presence, could not affirmatively identify Sullivan; she said only that his voice could very easily have been the attacker’s.

Unequal treatment and lasting consequence

The boys’ different treatment became part of the case’s wider injustice. McCants, who had implicated Sullivan, was sentenced as an adult to four and a half years and served six months. Gulley, despite admitting involvement in about twenty prior burglaries and a prior sex crime, was adjudicated and sentenced as a juvenile and spent only a short time in juvenile detention. Sullivan, by contrast, was indicted at thirteen in adult court for sexual battery and other charges, without a review of whether he should be tried as a juvenile or an adult.

The prosecution’s reliance on Gulley’s accusation helped place Sullivan at the center of the assault case, although Sullivan’s admitted role was the earlier burglary and the victim could not identify him as her attacker. A six-person jury convicted Sullivan after a one-day trial. The contrast between the accusation’s weight and its uncertain corroboration, and between the boys’ sharply different treatment, defines the significance of the relationship in the account: co-participation in a burglary became the basis for one boy’s accusation and another boy’s adult conviction.