Awaiting a judge’s sentencing in a Pennsylvania courtroom last week, Jim and Evelyn Piazza’s minds replayed the day their son landed in a hospital from a brain bleed after a college party.
They listened to attorneys defend the fraternity leaders who contributed to their son’s death during an initiation event at Pennsylvania State University in 2017. Evelyn watched video played in the courtroom, showing her son Timothy heavily intoxicated as he fell and bumped into furniture on the day before he died.
“It almost felt like your head was in a vise being squeezed,” Jim told the Washington Post.
Timothy, 19, died of traumatic injuries, including a fractured skull, lacerated spleen and a severe brain bleed, after he fell down a flight of stairs following excessive drinking in February 2017. No one called for help for almost 12 hours, police said.
On Tuesday, the last two defendants charged in his hazing case were sentenced in Centre County.
Brendan Young, the president of Penn State’s Beta Theta Pi chapter at the time of Timothy’s death, and Daniel Casey, the vice-president, were each sentenced to between two and four months in prison followed by three years of probation. They each pleaded guilty to 14 counts of hazing and a count of reckless endangerment in July.
Their sentences followed a recent trend of fraternity members facing prison time on charges related to hazing deaths. Hank Nuwer, who has written multiple books about hazing, said that before 2010 hazing deaths were usually punished with a fine and “a slap on the wrist.” But the activism of parents whose children have died as a result of hazing, including the Piazzas, has helped create harsher punishments, Nuwer said.
“In terms of fraternity deaths,” Nuwer said, “they were not looked at with culpability on the parts of the hazers for a long time.”
The Piazzas are now championing federal legislation that would require institutions to annually document hazing incidents. In their son’s case, Jim and Evelyn said Young and Casey should’ve faced harsher charges, such as involuntary manslaughter and aggravated assault, but a judge dismissed those charges in 2018. The former fraternity leaders should’ve been incarcerated for a year, Jim said.
“Are we happy with the sentences? No,” Jim said. “Did the judge provide a fair sentence for what he was left with? We think so.”
Attorneys representing Young, 28, and Casey, 27, did not respond to requests for a comment.
Young said at Tuesday’s hearing, according to the Centre Daily Times, that he’s a “completely different person” than he was in 2017 and he “cannot imagine the pain and suffering” the Piazzas have endured. Casey said at the hearing that he was “truly sorry,” the Centre Daily Times reported.
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The two join a growing trend of fraternity members facing greater scrutiny for hazing rituals — and even prison time. A former member of Louisiana State University’s Phi Delta Theta chapter was sentenced to 2½ years in prison in 2019 after a pledge died of alcohol intoxication and aspiration two years earlier. Three former members of Pi Delta Psi at New York’s Baruch College were sentenced to prison in 2018 for the death of a pledge after members knocked the student unconscious and waited an hour before taking him to a hospital in 2013.
After Timothy’s death, Penn State banned its university’s Beta Theta Pi chapter. In 2018, Jim and Evelyn helped implement a new state law in Timothy’s name that established stricter punishments for hazing, including making the most severe forms of hazing felonies. Had that law been in place at the time of Timothy’s death, the fraternity’s leaders could’ve faced harsher sentences, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office said Tuesday in a news release. A similar law was implemented in New Jersey, Timothy’s home state, in 2021.
Jim and Evelyn reached a settlement with Beta Theta Pi’s national organization in 2018. The next year, Jim and Evelyn agreed to a settlement with Penn State, which created a centre to study Greek life in memory of Timothy. Jim and Evelyn sued multiple fraternity members in 2019 in an ongoing civil case in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
Multiple fraternity members pleaded guilty to hazing after Timothy’s death, but Young and Casey will be the first to serve prison time. Jim and Evelyn said they attended some of their hearings, despite memories of Timothy’s final hours circling in their minds during each one: Learning that he was in the hospital, hearing from doctors that his brain was bleeding and deciding whether to try to resuscitate him or take him off life support.
“I wanted all of them to see us and to know the damage that they did,” said Evelyn, 56.
Last month, Jim and Evelyn travelled to D.C. to advocate for a federal law that would require colleges to disclose hazing incidents in public reports and create hazing education and prevention programs. The bill easily passed the U.S. House and awaits action in the Senate.
On Tuesday, Jim and Evelyn delivered testimonies at Young and Casey’s sentencing. They said they watched their heart rates spike on their Apple Watches while listening to the defence attorneys. Afterward, Jim, 63, said in a statement that “hopefully this sentencing makes a statement that hazing someone to death and hazing in general is not acceptable.”
Jim and Evelyn said they often think about what Timothy, who would’ve turned 27 last month, would be doing now had he not attended the fraternity event in 2017.
They said he would’ve been married to his high school girlfriend and working his dream job as an engineer, making prostheses for children and soldiers. Their family would’ve gone on vacations and attended Penn State football games, Evelyn said.
“We would have a totally different life,” Evelyn said. “And that’s always kind of floating around in the back of your mind.”