Boy (12) who killed Neo-Nazi father awaits sentencing
Published: 2013 March 01 11:45:06 (3291 Views)
Joseph Hall, 12, from California, US has been found guilty of murdering his neo-Nazi father when he was aged age 10.
He is expected to learn whether he will spend the rest of his youth in a juvenile jail or be allowed to be incarcerated in a private facility or group home.
Hall was convicted of second-degree murder for shooting his father at point blank range in May 2011, killing him as he slept.
The case made headlines because of the father's neo-Nazi ties and the rarity of a parent being killed by a child so young.
The boy's father Jeffrey Hall, 32, was a regional director of the National Socialist Movement, a white separatist group, and Joseph Hall's trial centered on allegations of abuse and the young defendant's grasp of right and wrong.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Jean Leonard, who heard the juvenile case without a jury, could send him to the Department of Juvenile Justice, where he would be the youngest child in custody and where he would likely remain until age 23.
Hall's family and other law and child experts say this would not be in the best interest of the child, although his lawyer acknowledges it may be the most likely placement. They prefer a treatment facility that might see him released sooner.
Defense attorneys had argued during the trial that Hall should not be held responsible for his actions because a lifetime of abuse and his father's neo-Nazi activities had conditioned him to violence.
But prosecutors said that the boy, who lived with four siblings, shot his father because he thought he was planning to divorce his stepmother and break up the family. Hall shot his father with the man's own gun.
With a finding of murder two as opposed to the voluntary manslaughter that the defense was striving for, the court has concluded that Hall knew that what he was doing was wrong at the time he pulled the trigger.
- Reuters
He is expected to learn whether he will spend the rest of his youth in a juvenile jail or be allowed to be incarcerated in a private facility or group home.
Hall was convicted of second-degree murder for shooting his father at point blank range in May 2011, killing him as he slept.
The case made headlines because of the father's neo-Nazi ties and the rarity of a parent being killed by a child so young.
The boy's father Jeffrey Hall, 32, was a regional director of the National Socialist Movement, a white separatist group, and Joseph Hall's trial centered on allegations of abuse and the young defendant's grasp of right and wrong.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Jean Leonard, who heard the juvenile case without a jury, could send him to the Department of Juvenile Justice, where he would be the youngest child in custody and where he would likely remain until age 23.
Hall's family and other law and child experts say this would not be in the best interest of the child, although his lawyer acknowledges it may be the most likely placement. They prefer a treatment facility that might see him released sooner.
Defense attorneys had argued during the trial that Hall should not be held responsible for his actions because a lifetime of abuse and his father's neo-Nazi activities had conditioned him to violence.
But prosecutors said that the boy, who lived with four siblings, shot his father because he thought he was planning to divorce his stepmother and break up the family. Hall shot his father with the man's own gun.
With a finding of murder two as opposed to the voluntary manslaughter that the defense was striving for, the court has concluded that Hall knew that what he was doing was wrong at the time he pulled the trigger.
- Reuters
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