Authorities who have struggled with the case of a 10-year-old California boy who shot and killed his neo-Nazi father will decide his fate after nearly three years of deliberation on Friday.
The child, whose identity has not yet been released, shot his father Jeff Hall on May 1, 2011. According to the Associated Press, he's spent the last two-and-a-half years in Riverside County's juvenile hall, attending classes while receiving near-daily therapy. Meanwhile, attorneys have been arguing over how to not only punish the child for committing second-degree murder, but also to help rehabilitate him after his troubling and abusive childhood.
The child has reportedly made noted progress since he entered the institutional facility. According to Riverside County Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Soccio, the boy who once stabbed his kindergarten teacher with a pencil and was inundated with Nazi beliefs has become relatively docile.
"I have grown attached to him in an odd way," Soccio told AP. "I enjoy watching him grow and change but I am convinced he has done better in a quasi-military penal environment. He seems to like it, he knows what the rules are and what is expected, and he is treated with dignity."
Soccio thinks that the 13-year-old boy should stay within the state's juvenile justice system, and live in a high-security facility where he would go to school and live in an area similar to dormitories, for young offenders.
But defense attorneys have steadily maintained that the teenager might be too far gone, emotionally speaking - so debilitated, in fact, that the state might not even be able to handle him. They told the court that the boy should be sent to a residential treatment center where he could receive more strenuous therapy in an environment with less security.
"It is a very dangerous place for him, he's got a lot of vulnerability here," Defense Attorney Punam Patel Grewal told AP, adding that putting him in a state institution could create problems, due to his father's white supremacist beliefs. "When he comes out at 23, we've got a huge problem."
"If the end goal is rehabilitation, then that youth's mental health concerns are going to have to be front and center," director of National Juvenile Justice Network Sarah Bryer said. "I think the judge has to ask the question, when this kid walks out - and this kid will walk out, eventually - how is this kid going to be better?"
The boy's father was a prominent leader of the National Socialist Movement who brought neo-Nazis together for demonstrations at synagogues. The child reportedly shot his father behind his ear at close range, using a .357-Magnum he took from his parents' bedroom. He told authorities that he was afraid he'd have to choose between living with his father and stepmother, who were preparing to divorce.
The child was repeatedly beaten by his father and biological mother growing up. When he started attending classes, he was kicked out of nearly every school he entered - at one point, he tried to strangle a teacher with a phone cord.
