09/25/08 From age 10, a life of violence

In his first encounter with the criminal-justice system in 1991, Daniel Giddings was convicted of beating and robbing a mentally disabled man in his North Philadelphia neighborhood.

Giddings was 10 years old.

During the next seven years, Giddings was continuously in and out of juvenile institutions, where he was charged several times with assaulting staff, sending some to the hospital, according to court records.

He told a court in 2000 that he sold drugs on the corner, raised pit bulls for fighting, and gambled. He had already been shot twice and been arrested several times as a juvenile for assault, including several instances involving guns.

When he faced Common Pleas Court Judge Lynn B. Hamlin as an adult in 2000, convicted of robbing and shooting a man in the kneecaps, Assistant District Attorney Joseph Coolican said there was "absolutely no reason to believe" that it would ever be safe to release Giddings.

Hamlin, alarmed by Giddings' criminal history but impressed by his grades in finishing a high school diploma while in custody, sentenced him to six to 12 years in prison - the minimum mandatory sentence.

On Tuesday, about a month after Giddings was released from prison to a halfway house, the 27-year-old man died in a shoot-out after police said he gunned down Officer Patrick McDonald following a traffic stop. Police say Giddings delivered the fatal shots while the wounded officer lay on a North Philadelphia street.

Giddings' mother, Theresa Bryant, said yesterday that Giddings had vowed never to return to jail - that he would rather die first.

"He told me, 'I'm so happy to be free. I'll never go back,' " Bryant said in an interview at her house in North Philadelphia.

Police expressed outrage yesterday that Giddings was released from prison after serving only 10 years, during which time he had amassed a poor disciplinary record.

"He was a thug among thugs," said Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey.

Ramsey said the Pennsylvania Probation and Parole Board owed the families of McDonald and Officer Richard Bowes, 36, whom Giddings shot and wounded before being killed, an explanation for Giddings' release.

Giddings, who police said was charged 27 times with disciplinary problems in prison and spent 537 days in solitary confinement, was granted parole last year on the recommendation of prison officials, according to the parole board's ruling.