WARSAW, Ind., Dec. 3 (UPI) -- An Indiana boy teen who was prosecuted as an adult for helping shoot a friend's stepfather, has struck a plea deal to lessen his prison sentence, lawyers said.
Paul Henry Gingerich was 12 when he and a friend -- Colt Lundy, who was 15 at the time -- shot and killed Lundy's stepfather, Phil Danner in his living room April 20, 2010. The boys said at the time Danner was the sole impediment to their running away to the West Coast.
Kosciusko County prosecutors asked for and were granted the right to try Gingerich as an adult.
Hoping to avoid a potentially longer sentence, Gingerich's family agreed the boy would plead guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit murder. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison -- six in a juvenile detention facility and the remainder in an adult maximum security facility, the Indianapolis Star reported Tuesday.
Prosecutors and a new judge have revisited the case under a statute known as Paul's Law, which allows judges in serious juvenile cases to revisit the matter as a child's rehabilitation progresses. Since Gingerich won the right to a new trial after filing an appeal, his lawyer, Monica Foster, struck a deal with prosecutors that will allow a judge to determine whether Gingerich is released from juvenile detention at 18 or transferred to an adult prison -- depending on Gingerich's progress while in custody.
"He has the keys to his own jail cell," Foster said. "I've known him for the last 2 1/2 years and I am willing to bet the mortgage on Paul Gingerich. He is a good kid who did a very bad thing."
