A Florida teenager who stabbed his mother to death was acquitted after he argued it was self-defense, nearly two years after he was accused of shooting and killing his father.
Collin Griffith, 17, was found not guilty on Wednesday of murdering his mom, Catherine “Cathy” Griffith, who was fatally stabbed in the neck at his grandmother’s home in Polk County in September.
Collin told police that she had lunged at him with a knife and fell on it — but a medical examiner ruled that Catherine’s wounds could not have been caused accidentally, and he was arrested and charged with murder and kidnapping.
The teenager’s defense team argued Collin had defended himself while the pair were fighting — and that there was no evidence that Catherine, 39, had been in the home of her mother, Susan Detman, against her will.
Witnesses told detectives that before the stabbing Collin and his mother had been shouting at each other outside the residence and saw the boy grab his mom by the hair and drag her inside as she repeatedly pleaded, “Let me go.”
Detman, who was not home at the time, testified that her daughter could be unpredictable and had a history of violence with her son — even once pointing a gun at him, NBC 2 reported.
Amy Thornhill, Collin’s attorney, claimed during the closing arguments that there was no way of knowing what had happened inside the house and suggested it’s plausible Catherine wanted to die by “suicide by son.”
He had been trying to leave his mom which is why he had been staying at his grandma’s house when she showed up, the lawyer argued.
“Isn’t it reasonable to believe that Cathy in her anger, her desperation to make Collin come home, that she picked up a knife and threatened him with it?,” Thornhill asked the jurors, according to People magazine.
He was ultimately found not guilty of both first-degree murder and kidnapping.
He hugged his public defense team as the judge read the verdict, and flashed a smile towards family members in the gallery — including his relieved aunt and grandmother, according to Fox 13.
Collin also fatally shot his father, Charles Robert Griffith, in their Lincoln County, Oklahoma home on Feb. 14, 2023.
The then-15-year-old told police that his father had cornered him in the house and, in an act of self-defense, he had shot him once in the chest and once in the head. No one else was home at the time.
He was charged with murder — but the charge was dropped less than a month later by the Attorney General after Oklahoma authorities could not find evidence that disputed Collin’s claim of self-defense, Judd said.
He was reunited with his mother exactly a year after he shot his father through Florida’s Department of Children and Families, and the two had a tumultuous relationship.
After Wednesday’s acquittal, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said his detectives still “firmly believe that Collin Griffith murdered Catherine.
“The jury determined that they could not convict him beyond and to the exclusion of all reasonable doubt,” Grady continued. “During our investigation, detectives found witnesses that believe he also murdered his father in Oklahoma. That investigation is ongoing.”
